14 ms·

Manager's Handbook (2020)

254 points by bspear 4y ago

thenerdhead 4y ago
I went through half of it. I think it has promise, but not really sure I would call it a handbook. Some things are just strange to me: > A senior employee comes to you with a competitive offer in hand, asking for a promotion. You investigate the situation and decide that, since you really don’t want to lose this employee, you will cave and give them a promotion. > You have just created a strong incentive for political behavior. Hard disagree. People look for more responsibility / jobs all the time and when they come to you saying they want to stay and this is their condition, you better honor it and not call it "politics". They don't have to do that at all and now you're back to hiring or backfilling. This is also literally the opposite of the highlights saying: > Attract, nurture, coach, and retain talent. > Keep an eye on your team's health and happiness. > Give your team a clear path to progress in their careers. Also this section on remote work is so out of touch: > Always have your camera on for meetings and touchpoints. Please ask others to do so as well. This is non-negotiable. There should be no state in which you are working where your camera can't be turned on. If you look like ass, own the fact that you look like ass and understand that at some point the people you are talking to will look like ass too. If you don't want to turn the camera on because you are sitting in bed and it's all messed up, then get out of the bed and go sit at a table or something. This isn't rocket science. Be 100% of yourself at all times, but be professional. An executive definitely wrote this. I bet they don't show their face to every call they take. The pandemic has made this normal, but prior to it I think this would be challenged. I don't need to see your face to work with you. Sure let's do it often, but not 24/7. > The terms “management” and “leadership” are often used interchangeably, but they are actually two distinct things. In short, management is tactical and leadership is strategic. This attitude I think harms the merit of what management really is. Management is a noble profession that people think is separate from leadership. They are the same regardless of what you think. I think Clayton Christensen said it best: > “I used to think that if you cared for other people, you need to study sociology or something like it. But….I [have] concluded, if you want to help other people, be a manager. If done well, management is among the most noble of professions. You are in a position where you have eight or ten hours every day from every person who works for you. You have the opportunity to frame each person’s work so that, at the end of every day, your employees will go home feeling like Diana felt on her good day: living a life filled with motivators.” I would overall call this a generic self-help guide for someone who happens to be a manager. It literally includes word for word ideas in the most random places like GTD, stoicism, and even a section on sales?
- tyre 4y ago
  Declining a promotion that a manager doesn’t feel is warranted does not conflict with providing a clear career path for team members. Promoting someone to staff engineer who doesn’t meet the bar lowers the bar for a staff engineer at the company. Promoting based on a threat to leave communicates that one path forward is negotiation through counter-offers. Maybe that’s the culture some company are after, I don’t know. Management and leadership are distinct. There are people managers who don’t lead their teams and senior ICs who do.
- fernandotakai 4y ago
  >The pandemic has made this normal, but prior to it I think this would be challenged. I don't need to see your face to work with you. Sure let's do it often, but not 24/7. my rules, since i started working remotely (so ~10y ago) regarding cameras are: on if the meeting has less than 10 people. on at the beginning from 10 to 20~30. after that number, off (since it doesn't matter anymore). that means that for team and project meetings, my camera is always on. for dept meetings, it's on at the beginning because i want people to know i'm around and paying attention (usually i turn it off after the meeting starts properly). and for company wide meetings, it's off because there are so many people that it doesn't really matter if the CEO can see me or ont.
- ithkuil 4y ago
  Every time I quit it was because I wanted to quit and when asked from my employer what would have taken to change my mind I couldn't find anything realistic they could offer me to stay. But that's because in my cases compensation wasn't the main motivation for desiring to leave. I can totally imagine a different scenario where people who are clearly underpaid must follow a different strategy. It all boils down to a) does the employer underpay the employee b) does the employer understand how much the employee feels sincerely underpaid? Point (b) is an important nitpick because often employers and employees have radically different measures of what is "right", in particular when you throw in rules about location-based compensation.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I feel “quitting” is like the last few seconds of the NTSB record of a plane crash - technically things haven’t happened yet but the actual problem points are long past. It’s often hard to identify a proximate cause right before - usually it goes back a long way.
ms4720 4y ago
I get an unexpected error, seems about right
- BLKNSLVR 4y ago
  Doesn't that mean it's an expected error?
- samstave 4y ago
  Yeah... so... I'm going to go ahead and ask you to come in tomorrow, Sunday, to take a look at what the error is.... k? Ok. Thanksssss. Sips coffee
- melvinmelih 4y ago
  Let's point it out to them immediately. If they apologize, we respond that apologies are not needed, and all that is required is that they only make sites that they can keep up and that they meet all the agreements they make. If the website admin continues to fail at these, there is only one consequence that makes sense: they can no longer be part of the company.
Kototama 4y ago
Oh no, it has a whole section on enneagram, which is pseudo-science.
- catach 4y ago
  They do preface with: "It is not an exact science. It is not there to pigeonhole people or to be an excuse for bad behavior. It is just a useful framework for understanding yourself and others a little better. And the better you understand someone, the better you can work together."
  - FastMonkey 4y ago
    I wouldn't have any issue with this type of stuff if it was just for pure self understanding. It's interesting to have that kind of reflection. However, even if the science were sound, we wouldn't just fall into a single category, we would be a little bit in all of them. We also adapt to our surroundings and change a bit over time. Unfortunately, the fact is that promotion and hiring decisions are made based on things like this. The people promoting it are usually business and HR people who don't have an understanding of how shakey their underpinning is. They just think "we want a reformer, and this fancy test says that Cam has the highest reformer points out of the applicants we've seen so let's hire them".
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Sounds about as pertinent as the “do not put cotton swab in ear canal. never ever clean your ear with cotton swab” and probably about as well obeyed.
  - dtjb 4y ago
    I just took the test from their provided link (eclecticenergies.com) and it is 100% woo. Spiritual chakra energy lifeforce crystals woo. That site should not be used, at least not directly, by anybody in a professional managerial setting.
    - jeffybefffy519 4y ago
      I think you aren’t thinking about this enough. Any human physiology test is going to be somewhat ‘woo’ because humans are complex that way. Just use it as a tool and understand that it has limitations.
rebeccaskinner 4y ago
I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it can be good to try to encourage people to be on video occasionally, but when and how often should really be left up to the individual. As a manager, I make it a point to try to turn my own video on most of the time, but I'd never ask someone to turn their camera on in any particular call. I want people to be able to do their best work. Building a solid team culture means you should see one another from time to time, but it doesn't have to be every call, or even most calls, and there are a lot of people who struggle from time to time to do their best work on camera. Sometimes people are in a messy room or feel self conscious about their appearance. Sometimes people are just distracted staring at their own image on a call. Some people have to share their workspace with a partner or roommate who might be distracting in the background. Sometimes people are running something compute intensive in the background while taking a call and their computer gets too bogged down trying to encode video while also running whatever more important task it should be doing. Whatever the reason, I want people focusing on the work they are trying to do and if having their camera off lets them focus better, I'm going to encourage them to do that.
- bawolff 4y ago
  Sometimes zoom fatigue is real and being watched all the time is exhausting (somehow more so than real in person meetings)
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    It’s because in real meetings, you know who people are focusing on. In virtual meetings, everyone is staring at you all the time.
    - itronitron 4y ago
      This is why meetings, and especially online classes, should be held in Minecraft, as it's very easy to see where people are looking.
- 4y ago
ericb 4y ago
> The first time someone doesn’t meet an agreement, you point it out to them immediately. If they apologize, you respond that apologies are not needed, and all that is required is that they only make agreements that they can commit to and that they meet all the agreements they make. If the person continues to fail at these, there is only one consequence that makes sense: they can no longer be part of the company.” This reads like a toxic culture playbook. Managers can commit to nothing, or commit to things and fail when there are inevitably things they can't control and face "consequences." A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
- jackblemming 4y ago
  Right? And why point it out immediately the first time? Everyone messes up occasionally. No need to be habitually breathing down their neck. Rebuking an apology just makes you sound like an asshole.
  - twayt 4y ago
    This works as intended to alienate people who can’t keep the commitments they make. Both by actively eliminating them and passively making it a painful place for them to work. The people who can keep commitments they make would enjoy working there. I’m sure once they’ve developed a track record of keeping the commitments they make, it won’t be as draconian as it seems. However this disincentivizes the often productive approach of “throwing your hat over the fence” so to speak and committing to something you may not already know is achievable. Perhaps clearbit’s business model doesn’t hinge on their employees driving innovation and they need more predictable results at a reliable cadence. This approach doesn’t work for everyone or every company. This seems to be by design.
    - ericb 4y ago
      Only management sufficiently divorced from reality can forget that "reality has a surprising amount of detail" https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/delivering-large-scale-it-projects-on-time-on-budget-and-on-value https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital... > suggests that half of all large IT projects—defined as those with initial price tags exceeding $15 million—massively blow their budgets. On average, large IT projects run 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, while delivering 56 percent less value than predicted. Software projects run the highest risk of cost and schedule overruns. So, either this clearbit management magic makes all the normal scaling and estimation problems go away magically, or it is a really toxic management approach.
kuharich 4y ago
Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25549856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25549856
charles_f 4y ago
The more time passes, the less interest I see in line manager (aka m1) roles. I've been m1, m2 for some time, then ic, then m1 again. Now that I'm being on track to be m2 again, I think I'll just drop the towel and get back to ic. The only thing that's been keeping me from doing so so far is that I never had a manager I actually deemed competent in that they were trying to understand the underlying technical aspect of the job in a way that actually helped me as an ic. The only ones I have liked were those just leaving me alone. The impact of bad management is marginally lesser for managers themselves, and at least I can try to do some good in my team. But the admin cost of line management, added to having to deal with people's emotions all the time, the context switching, constant interruptions, politics and general vaporware BS remove any true possibility to be "strategic", or genuinely have time to coach people through anything significant. I find the effective job closer to a mix of hr, with exec admin role, with catchall person who needs to produce the decision juice when people don't want to. It's just not worth it. I also really dislike the notion of being "promoted" into management. It's another profession altogether. You're not promoted, you're transferring. At best its a graduation if you actually succeeded in some form of training. But let's get real, people get slapped with a manager title, and one in a thousand will care enough to open a book or even just a blog post about anything related to learning the job. Most new managers are "trained" by a combination of their own clueless bosses, and inspirational memes on LinkedIn telling you should be a leader rather than a manager. Stop pretending there is a real notion of hierarchy between managers and ic, managers are equally incompetent as anybody else (well, that's not true, they tend to be worse since lots are driven by ego and power hunger rather than a genuine interest in the job), thinking that it is a promotion is stupid.
mkl95 4y ago
> With a top-grading interview, you are working through the candidate’s last five positions (in chronological order), asking a set of questions to determine how successful they were. It's important that the hiring manager responsible for the role is the one who conducts this interview. I've gone through this step countless times and every time I just reword what's already on my LinkedIn profile. If you like what you read there, there really is no reason to have this conversation.
- throwoutway 4y ago
  I've interviewed folks who have lied on their resume, and it was well worth my time to ask a few questions about how they achieved their bullet points. I do nt ask things in chronological order like this Hanbook suggests, nor every role
kkfx 4y ago
There is a lesson from the history, especially from the IT history about how people do not understand tools they use and so they try to mimic old paradigms used in old tools with them. I suggest seeing old General Magick, Magic Cap UIs for instance https://youtu.be/iw4mi6SKNp8 https://youtu.be/iw4mi6SKNp8 there is NO point in try representing a virtual office with a virtual desk with a virtual file cabinet, suspended folders etc it's just useless clutter that slow down the work. But people try to mimic that and keep doing the same for decades before a small change followed by another small and various other crappy solution to make the situation even worse. Remote work and office work are different, there is NO POINT in mimicking the latter in the former, like there is no point in making big north-facing windows in cold climate because that's normally done in hot south and vice versa. That's just blind ignorance and fear of change. I can understand both, but please do not encourage such behaviors, instead try to craft a REAL new remote paradigm too many have no idea about how to shape it.
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
Coders are the new managers Ok - so quick thoughts - companies are moving to run all processes on software. software is eating the world and if they are not already (manufacturing) the essence of a business (core competency) is becoming digitised. that means you need to be a coder to create the core competency, monitoring it or chnage it. Some people will be experts who learn to code, more often it seems coders will learn to be experts (mostly because you cannot create the code if you don't understand the job) (side note I argue that software is a form of literacy so substitute "able to read and write for coder) This leads to a number of issues - the first one here is that managers in say the 1960s bestrode the world, before digitisation one person had to be the nexus for information in order to make day to day decisions. but software replaces that (cf the bank manager replaced with algorithm) and all managers are going that way because it allows more efficient decisions - and so we have the Google manager - not a decision maker but a coach for the real decision makers - coders. which leads us to - management only applies at the level of hiring and firing (i mean if a non coder is telling coders what to write it's already broken). so if you are not the person with hiring / firing / internal team allocation you are not a manager - and if you are and you are not focused on pull requests and automated testing you are doing it wrong Which also leads us to managers are the new VC/investors - funding teams for results.
- SamuelAdams 4y ago
  Not necessarily. In my current role I am the implementer, and I may have to explain the current behavior of systems to managers. But they ultimately make the decision on what gets changed. I present it as business impact / use cases, they decide what “policy” (non-tech) changes they want to make, and I decide how to technically best implement that considering the existing design and new changes.
  - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
    meh. That's like "artists impression" view on a building and actually what gets built. What gets built matters. It's all that matters. And anyone who says "i built this building" when they were the one who pointed at a set of different artists impressions is frankly deluded. (I have my inner socialist rearing up inside !) more conciliatory, we all try to pay lip service to "business" in charge and "business decisions" that is less and less a reality - the policies are in code. Read the code, don't pretend the powerpoint based on the meeting based on the comments in the code will get you an understanding Edit: ok more conciliatory- there is always going to be politics, so there is always debate amoung voters (employees? stakeholders?) and there are always politicians holding a manifesto of changes - but that person (manager) should be able to read the code and understand the implications of the different changes which also nearly follows to my next great idea - vote for policies in a company which is same as vote for executives, Let's make annual baord elections binding and competitive :-)
hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
The idea of "Managing yourself before managing a team" sounds true to me. I cannot manage myself very well (lack of discipline, not long term target, barely surviving mentally due to numerous issues, etc.) and indeed I cannot really imagine how do I manage a group of 10.
lee 4y ago
I really like how the book's website is structured. Does anyone know what app they used to create the handbook?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dominotw 4y ago
Being a manager in modern day means you have to accept being a devious person to a certain degree. You are in the middle of managing two conflicting goals of company and the employee. Each wants to extract as much as possible from the other. Promotions for example are always based on nebulous criteria that are often made up on the fly. Yea there are career ladders and stuff but those are totally ignored for all practical purposes. As a manager you have to make up BS on the fly when an employee asks you why they were not promoted despite doing everything you asked them to do. Pomotions aren't really in your control as a low lever manager.
- atypeoferror 4y ago
  There is a lot to unpack in this comment, but in general the situation described here is specific to certain kinds of organizations, with lamentably poor leadership and management cultures. If management views the employer-employee relationship as some sort of zero-sum game - they have already lost that game. In companies with mature (which doesn't mean old - a relatively young company can also be well-run!) structures, the criteria for promotion are not nebulous. I struggle to see the wisdom in setting goals for an employee's promotion without the intention of rewarding them for working hard to meet those goals. In general, I would encourage anyone who is in a working situation described above to look for another job - and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview! As interviewers, we are comfortable asking hard questions, I don't see why being a candidate should be any different. Is there a structured feedback system in your company? What is it, and how closely does your team follow it? When was the last person in your team promoted, and how long were they in their previous role? etc.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    > and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview! In theory, I agree. The reality is these orgs are crap for a reason...they drink too much of their own Kool Aid, they don't realize they have blindspots, etc. The point being, good luck getting a transparent and honest answer as that's the antithesis of their philosophy.

254 points by bspear 4y ago

I went through half of it. I think it has promise, but not really sure I would call it a handbook. Some things are just strange to me: > A senior employee comes to you with a competitive offer in hand, asking for a promotion. You investigate the situation and decide that, since you really don’t want to lose this employee, you will cave and give them a promotion. > You have just created a strong incentive for political behavior. Hard disagree. People look for more responsibility / jobs all the time and when they come to you saying they want to stay and this is their condition, you better honor it and not call it "politics". They don't have to do that at all and now you're back to hiring or backfilling. This is also literally the opposite of the highlights saying: > Attract, nurture, coach, and retain talent. > Keep an eye on your team's health and happiness. > Give your team a clear path to progress in their careers. Also this section on remote work is so out of touch: > Always have your camera on for meetings and touchpoints. Please ask others to do so as well. This is non-negotiable. There should be no state in which you are working where your camera can't be turned on. If you look like ass, own the fact that you look like ass and understand that at some point the people you are talking to will look like ass too. If you don't want to turn the camera on because you are sitting in bed and it's all messed up, then get out of the bed and go sit at a table or something. This isn't rocket science. Be 100% of yourself at all times, but be professional. An executive definitely wrote this. I bet they don't show their face to every call they take. The pandemic has made this normal, but prior to it I think this would be challenged. I don't need to see your face to work with you. Sure let's do it often, but not 24/7. > The terms “management” and “leadership” are often used interchangeably, but they are actually two distinct things. In short, management is tactical and leadership is strategic. This attitude I think harms the merit of what management really is. Management is a noble profession that people think is separate from leadership. They are the same regardless of what you think. I think Clayton Christensen said it best: > “I used to think that if you cared for other people, you need to study sociology or something like it. But….I [have] concluded, if you want to help other people, be a manager. If done well, management is among the most noble of professions. You are in a position where you have eight or ten hours every day from every person who works for you. You have the opportunity to frame each person’s work so that, at the end of every day, your employees will go home feeling like Diana felt on her good day: living a life filled with motivators.” I would overall call this a generic self-help guide for someone who happens to be a manager. It literally includes word for word ideas in the most random places like GTD, stoicism, and even a section on sales?

tyre 4y ago
Declining a promotion that a manager doesn’t feel is warranted does not conflict with providing a clear career path for team members. Promoting someone to staff engineer who doesn’t meet the bar lowers the bar for a staff engineer at the company. Promoting based on a threat to leave communicates that one path forward is negotiation through counter-offers. Maybe that’s the culture some company are after, I don’t know. Management and leadership are distinct. There are people managers who don’t lead their teams and senior ICs who do.
fernandotakai 4y ago
>The pandemic has made this normal, but prior to it I think this would be challenged. I don't need to see your face to work with you. Sure let's do it often, but not 24/7. my rules, since i started working remotely (so ~10y ago) regarding cameras are: on if the meeting has less than 10 people. on at the beginning from 10 to 20~30. after that number, off (since it doesn't matter anymore). that means that for team and project meetings, my camera is always on. for dept meetings, it's on at the beginning because i want people to know i'm around and paying attention (usually i turn it off after the meeting starts properly). and for company wide meetings, it's off because there are so many people that it doesn't really matter if the CEO can see me or ont.
ithkuil 4y ago
Every time I quit it was because I wanted to quit and when asked from my employer what would have taken to change my mind I couldn't find anything realistic they could offer me to stay. But that's because in my cases compensation wasn't the main motivation for desiring to leave. I can totally imagine a different scenario where people who are clearly underpaid must follow a different strategy. It all boils down to a) does the employer underpay the employee b) does the employer understand how much the employee feels sincerely underpaid? Point (b) is an important nitpick because often employers and employees have radically different measures of what is "right", in particular when you throw in rules about location-based compensation.
- bombcar 4y ago
  I feel “quitting” is like the last few seconds of the NTSB record of a plane crash - technically things haven’t happened yet but the actual problem points are long past. It’s often hard to identify a proximate cause right before - usually it goes back a long way.

ms4720 4y ago

I get an unexpected error, seems about right

BLKNSLVR 4y ago
Doesn't that mean it's an expected error?
samstave 4y ago
Yeah... so... I'm going to go ahead and ask you to come in tomorrow, Sunday, to take a look at what the error is.... k? Ok. Thanksssss. Sips coffee
melvinmelih 4y ago
Let's point it out to them immediately. If they apologize, we respond that apologies are not needed, and all that is required is that they only make sites that they can keep up and that they meet all the agreements they make. If the website admin continues to fail at these, there is only one consequence that makes sense: they can no longer be part of the company.

Kototama 4y ago

Oh no, it has a whole section on enneagram, which is pseudo-science.

catach 4y ago
They do preface with: "It is not an exact science. It is not there to pigeonhole people or to be an excuse for bad behavior. It is just a useful framework for understanding yourself and others a little better. And the better you understand someone, the better you can work together."
- FastMonkey 4y ago
  I wouldn't have any issue with this type of stuff if it was just for pure self understanding. It's interesting to have that kind of reflection. However, even if the science were sound, we wouldn't just fall into a single category, we would be a little bit in all of them. We also adapt to our surroundings and change a bit over time. Unfortunately, the fact is that promotion and hiring decisions are made based on things like this. The people promoting it are usually business and HR people who don't have an understanding of how shakey their underpinning is. They just think "we want a reformer, and this fancy test says that Cam has the highest reformer points out of the applicants we've seen so let's hire them".
- bombcar 4y ago
  Sounds about as pertinent as the “do not put cotton swab in ear canal. never ever clean your ear with cotton swab” and probably about as well obeyed.
- dtjb 4y ago
  I just took the test from their provided link (eclecticenergies.com) and it is 100% woo. Spiritual chakra energy lifeforce crystals woo. That site should not be used, at least not directly, by anybody in a professional managerial setting.
  - jeffybefffy519 4y ago
    I think you aren’t thinking about this enough. Any human physiology test is going to be somewhat ‘woo’ because humans are complex that way. Just use it as a tool and understand that it has limitations.

rebeccaskinner 4y ago

I really dislike the idea that people should be required to have their cameras on for all meetings. I think for people who rarely see one another in person, it can be good to try to encourage people to be on video occasionally, but when and how often should really be left up to the individual. As a manager, I make it a point to try to turn my own video on most of the time, but I'd never ask someone to turn their camera on in any particular call. I want people to be able to do their best work. Building a solid team culture means you should see one another from time to time, but it doesn't have to be every call, or even most calls, and there are a lot of people who struggle from time to time to do their best work on camera. Sometimes people are in a messy room or feel self conscious about their appearance. Sometimes people are just distracted staring at their own image on a call. Some people have to share their workspace with a partner or roommate who might be distracting in the background. Sometimes people are running something compute intensive in the background while taking a call and their computer gets too bogged down trying to encode video while also running whatever more important task it should be doing. Whatever the reason, I want people focusing on the work they are trying to do and if having their camera off lets them focus better, I'm going to encourage them to do that.

bawolff 4y ago
Sometimes zoom fatigue is real and being watched all the time is exhausting (somehow more so than real in person meetings)
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  It’s because in real meetings, you know who people are focusing on. In virtual meetings, everyone is staring at you all the time.
  - itronitron 4y ago
    This is why meetings, and especially online classes, should be held in Minecraft, as it's very easy to see where people are looking.
4y ago

ericb 4y ago

> The first time someone doesn’t meet an agreement, you point it out to them immediately. If they apologize, you respond that apologies are not needed, and all that is required is that they only make agreements that they can commit to and that they meet all the agreements they make. If the person continues to fail at these, there is only one consequence that makes sense: they can no longer be part of the company.” This reads like a toxic culture playbook. Managers can commit to nothing, or commit to things and fail when there are inevitably things they can't control and face "consequences." A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.

jackblemming 4y ago
Right? And why point it out immediately the first time? Everyone messes up occasionally. No need to be habitually breathing down their neck. Rebuking an apology just makes you sound like an asshole.
- twayt 4y ago
  This works as intended to alienate people who can’t keep the commitments they make. Both by actively eliminating them and passively making it a painful place for them to work. The people who can keep commitments they make would enjoy working there. I’m sure once they’ve developed a track record of keeping the commitments they make, it won’t be as draconian as it seems. However this disincentivizes the often productive approach of “throwing your hat over the fence” so to speak and committing to something you may not already know is achievable. Perhaps clearbit’s business model doesn’t hinge on their employees driving innovation and they need more predictable results at a reliable cadence. This approach doesn’t work for everyone or every company. This seems to be by design.
  - ericb 4y ago
    Only management sufficiently divorced from reality can forget that "reality has a surprising amount of detail" https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/delivering-large-scale-it-projects-on-time-on-budget-and-on-value https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-digital... > suggests that half of all large IT projects—defined as those with initial price tags exceeding $15 million—massively blow their budgets. On average, large IT projects run 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, while delivering 56 percent less value than predicted. Software projects run the highest risk of cost and schedule overruns. So, either this clearbit management magic makes all the normal scaling and estimation problems go away magically, or it is a really toxic management approach.

kuharich 4y ago

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25549856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25549856

charles_f 4y ago

The more time passes, the less interest I see in line manager (aka m1) roles. I've been m1, m2 for some time, then ic, then m1 again. Now that I'm being on track to be m2 again, I think I'll just drop the towel and get back to ic. The only thing that's been keeping me from doing so so far is that I never had a manager I actually deemed competent in that they were trying to understand the underlying technical aspect of the job in a way that actually helped me as an ic. The only ones I have liked were those just leaving me alone. The impact of bad management is marginally lesser for managers themselves, and at least I can try to do some good in my team. But the admin cost of line management, added to having to deal with people's emotions all the time, the context switching, constant interruptions, politics and general vaporware BS remove any true possibility to be "strategic", or genuinely have time to coach people through anything significant. I find the effective job closer to a mix of hr, with exec admin role, with catchall person who needs to produce the decision juice when people don't want to. It's just not worth it. I also really dislike the notion of being "promoted" into management. It's another profession altogether. You're not promoted, you're transferring. At best its a graduation if you actually succeeded in some form of training. But let's get real, people get slapped with a manager title, and one in a thousand will care enough to open a book or even just a blog post about anything related to learning the job. Most new managers are "trained" by a combination of their own clueless bosses, and inspirational memes on LinkedIn telling you should be a leader rather than a manager. Stop pretending there is a real notion of hierarchy between managers and ic, managers are equally incompetent as anybody else (well, that's not true, they tend to be worse since lots are driven by ego and power hunger rather than a genuine interest in the job), thinking that it is a promotion is stupid.

mkl95 4y ago

> With a top-grading interview, you are working through the candidate’s last five positions (in chronological order), asking a set of questions to determine how successful they were. It's important that the hiring manager responsible for the role is the one who conducts this interview. I've gone through this step countless times and every time I just reword what's already on my LinkedIn profile. If you like what you read there, there really is no reason to have this conversation.

throwoutway 4y ago
I've interviewed folks who have lied on their resume, and it was well worth my time to ask a few questions about how they achieved their bullet points. I do nt ask things in chronological order like this Hanbook suggests, nor every role

kkfx 4y ago

There is a lesson from the history, especially from the IT history about how people do not understand tools they use and so they try to mimic old paradigms used in old tools with them. I suggest seeing old General Magick, Magic Cap UIs for instance https://youtu.be/iw4mi6SKNp8 https://youtu.be/iw4mi6SKNp8 there is NO point in try representing a virtual office with a virtual desk with a virtual file cabinet, suspended folders etc it's just useless clutter that slow down the work. But people try to mimic that and keep doing the same for decades before a small change followed by another small and various other crappy solution to make the situation even worse. Remote work and office work are different, there is NO POINT in mimicking the latter in the former, like there is no point in making big north-facing windows in cold climate because that's normally done in hot south and vice versa. That's just blind ignorance and fear of change. I can understand both, but please do not encourage such behaviors, instead try to craft a REAL new remote paradigm too many have no idea about how to shape it.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

Coders are the new managers Ok - so quick thoughts - companies are moving to run all processes on software. software is eating the world and if they are not already (manufacturing) the essence of a business (core competency) is becoming digitised. that means you need to be a coder to create the core competency, monitoring it or chnage it. Some people will be experts who learn to code, more often it seems coders will learn to be experts (mostly because you cannot create the code if you don't understand the job) (side note I argue that software is a form of literacy so substitute "able to read and write for coder) This leads to a number of issues - the first one here is that managers in say the 1960s bestrode the world, before digitisation one person had to be the nexus for information in order to make day to day decisions. but software replaces that (cf the bank manager replaced with algorithm) and all managers are going that way because it allows more efficient decisions - and so we have the Google manager - not a decision maker but a coach for the real decision makers - coders. which leads us to - management only applies at the level of hiring and firing (i mean if a non coder is telling coders what to write it's already broken). so if you are not the person with hiring / firing / internal team allocation you are not a manager - and if you are and you are not focused on pull requests and automated testing you are doing it wrong Which also leads us to managers are the new VC/investors - funding teams for results.

SamuelAdams 4y ago
Not necessarily. In my current role I am the implementer, and I may have to explain the current behavior of systems to managers. But they ultimately make the decision on what gets changed. I present it as business impact / use cases, they decide what “policy” (non-tech) changes they want to make, and I decide how to technically best implement that considering the existing design and new changes.
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  meh. That's like "artists impression" view on a building and actually what gets built. What gets built matters. It's all that matters. And anyone who says "i built this building" when they were the one who pointed at a set of different artists impressions is frankly deluded. (I have my inner socialist rearing up inside !) more conciliatory, we all try to pay lip service to "business" in charge and "business decisions" that is less and less a reality - the policies are in code. Read the code, don't pretend the powerpoint based on the meeting based on the comments in the code will get you an understanding Edit: ok more conciliatory- there is always going to be politics, so there is always debate amoung voters (employees? stakeholders?) and there are always politicians holding a manifesto of changes - but that person (manager) should be able to read the code and understand the implications of the different changes which also nearly follows to my next great idea - vote for policies in a company which is same as vote for executives, Let's make annual baord elections binding and competitive :-)

hnthrowaway0315 4y ago

The idea of "Managing yourself before managing a team" sounds true to me. I cannot manage myself very well (lack of discipline, not long term target, barely surviving mentally due to numerous issues, etc.) and indeed I cannot really imagine how do I manage a group of 10.

lee 4y ago

I really like how the book's website is structured. Does anyone know what app they used to create the handbook?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dominotw 4y ago

Being a manager in modern day means you have to accept being a devious person to a certain degree. You are in the middle of managing two conflicting goals of company and the employee. Each wants to extract as much as possible from the other. Promotions for example are always based on nebulous criteria that are often made up on the fly. Yea there are career ladders and stuff but those are totally ignored for all practical purposes. As a manager you have to make up BS on the fly when an employee asks you why they were not promoted despite doing everything you asked them to do. Pomotions aren't really in your control as a low lever manager.

atypeoferror 4y ago
There is a lot to unpack in this comment, but in general the situation described here is specific to certain kinds of organizations, with lamentably poor leadership and management cultures. If management views the employer-employee relationship as some sort of zero-sum game - they have already lost that game. In companies with mature (which doesn't mean old - a relatively young company can also be well-run!) structures, the criteria for promotion are not nebulous. I struggle to see the wisdom in setting goals for an employee's promotion without the intention of rewarding them for working hard to meet those goals. In general, I would encourage anyone who is in a working situation described above to look for another job - and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview! As interviewers, we are comfortable asking hard questions, I don't see why being a candidate should be any different. Is there a structured feedback system in your company? What is it, and how closely does your team follow it? When was the last person in your team promoted, and how long were they in their previous role? etc.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  > and ask about the management and leadership philosophy when you interview! In theory, I agree. The reality is these orgs are crap for a reason...they drink too much of their own Kool Aid, they don't realize they have blindspots, etc. The point being, good luck getting a transparent and honest answer as that's the antithesis of their philosophy.