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I'm an IC-turned-manager. There are definitely some bad managers out there, but generally managers aren't that different than ICs in terms of motivation. We all

I'm an IC-turned-manager. There are definitely some bad managers out there, but generally managers aren't that different than ICs in terms of motivation. We all just want to get our jobs done and do good work as a team. > We individual contributors may not think about this much, but the absolute thrill of being above others in the hierarchy only reaches its fullness when the employees get out of the damn pajamas and into the open offices. Please pick me up a coffee while you are at it. This is a wildly cynical take. If you're dealing with managers like this, you're not in a normal tech office environment. Every decent tech company I've ever worked with has put a lot of pressure on managers to treat employees well. Retention is a huge issue, especially in this market, and managers actually spend a lot of time trying to cater to their IC's wishes rather than jerking them around. Any tech manager who acts like you describe will steadily fail out of tech companies due to employee attrition.

akkartik 5y ago
I'm curious what your take is on: * Whether people should go into work * Where the pressure to go into work comes from in an org
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > * Whether people should go into work I work remote. I manage remote teams. I love it and I think it's great. But it's definitely not for everyone. A lot of people can't handle remote work. A lot of people don't have the self discipline to get work done without being in a social context (some of my remote team members work in coworking spaces as a workaround). A lot of people see remote as an opportunity to isolate from the team and dodge important communications. I think we need to get past this idea that one type of work is best for everyone and every team. When people try to say that remote is superior, they don't know what they're talking about. It's one the most "it depends" topics out there right now. > * Where the pressure to go into work comes from in an org Let me answer this indirectly: If companies saw a net increase in productivity and employee well-being from going remote, they'd be falling all over themselves to go all-in on remote work. Getting rid of office space and being able to hire anywhere is a huge advantage and every executive team I know was enthralled with the idea. So why would they want to retain expensive office space and limit themselves to hiring only nearby candidates? It's because for every 1 person who's great at remote work, there may be 1-3 others who aren't doing well at all. Juniors and new hires suffer the most because ramp-up times become extremely slow when the rest of the team is isolated away working on their tasks and uninterested in talking to anyone they don't have to. Interpersonal conflicts are way up because people misinterpret things as insulting or offensive because they can't see the other person's face. Fights and arguments break out everywhere because there's little difference between the company Slack and the other Discords where the person alt+tabs to argue with people. In short: Remote is hard, creates more work for management, is detrimental to juniors and new hires, and doesn't work for everyone. If a company is willing to invest a lot of money and time into hiring more managers to deal with it and churning through hires who can't handle remote, it can work. But it's often easier and happier for everyone to just go into the office a day or two per week to resolve these issues in person. Even as a remote team, flying everyone into the same location is hands down the easiest way to get people communicating efficiently and treating each other as human team members instead of Slack screen name enemies. Remote is hard.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    "why would they want to retain expensive office space" The increasing value of property and the need to collectively keep office space prices high is a big reason. Do you know how much Apple or Google's campus is worth?
  - greedo 5y ago
    We own three campuses. There's no financial benefit to keep them since most of our staff can work remotely just fine. We've had two straight record years in revenue and profit, but the pride of owning these white elephants makes people come to bad conclusions.
  - lytefm 5y ago
    > Remote is hard, creates more work for management, is detrimental to juniors and new hires, and doesn't work for everyone. I agree. I really enjoy working hybrid myself - going to the office every now and then to have some human contact, otherwise working from home or wherever I am. It also depends a lot in the living situation: A 20-something single who lives in the center anyways might enjoy going to the office, a married 40-something in the suburb would rather work from home all the time.
jvanderbot 5y ago
Agree 100% (as an IC-turned-manager myself). 5 years ago, I exercised my privilege (as an IC with a lenient boss), to work from another state for a few months. During that time, I dialed into meetings that were otherwise held in person. My experience: - Nobody remembered to ask me for my opinion, so I was constantly interrupting - Often, people just forgot to open the telcon, so I was ignored on hold - Often, people forgot to present the slides / visuals over telcon as well as the projector, so I had to interrupt them and cause 5 minute delays - Whiteboard designs? Flat out of scope - Try pitching ideas over the phone to a room full of stakeholders. They treat you like a spam caller A project I was leading for a new design was "killed" and "revived" with exactly the same team, but another (onsite) person swapped out for my role. That person is now in charge of the project, and it's a big, big deal, with attention all the way up to Washington. His career is skyrocketing because of this. Working hybrid may not be a scam in and of itself, but I suspect someone with 10+ years experience managing recognizes that all remote, or all in person, are both tenable solutions, but hybrid will cause a separate-and-not-equal workforce schism.
- kkfx 5y ago
  Sorry for the rude intervention but... > Nobody remembered to ask me for my opinion, so I was constantly interrupting that's not much because of you or others but the actual management organization is crap. The basic idea is have a workforce, at any level, made of stereotypical Ford-model workers, those who ancient Greek's call "useful idiots", people just able to work but mentally unable to be citizens, to be adult, autonomous. So there is the idea of creating a hierarchy of shepherds to keep the flock "as it should" and that does not work because such social model does not work. A proof? We have not invented anything really new in the last decades. We have improved anything, popularized anything, but nothing really new have seen the light. Now for the first time in human history after industrial revolution began we see a decline in quality of anything not because of scarcity or war but because of a system that can't anymore sustain itself having consumed itself from the inside. That's the classic failure of merchants societies: they are skilled in making money, but they only exists if there are some others society to commerce with, different society who develop and produce. Now that everything is commerce... > I suspect someone with 10+ years experience managing recognizes that all remote, or all in person, are both tenable solutions, but hybrid will cause a separate-and-not-equal workforce schism. I think it's already there: most talented escape, lest talented start the so called big resignation with vague autarkic attempts doomed to fail and resulting in a mass of future new poor ready to be inserted in the WEF 2030's agenda new society. Being in person offer benefits form human interaction we can't have on remote BUT have the downside of the physical location need. In a changing world people want freedom and actual cities does not offer that and have no visible chance of improvement. Remote allow living in good place with enough services at interesting costs (at least in theory, in practice for some a bad cold shower of reality for others) trading the less benefit from human interaction to a far more comfortable life. In a society designed around the panem et circense concept at the start of a scarcity era most prefer the circense in absence seen the scarcity of panem... Beside that, at another level, economy of scale have reached the tipping point of density where we are now too dense and so the scale benefit drop crushed by the density costs. A reset is needed and nobody want to be in the places to be resetted and no one know how will be the new world. So no one want brace the new trying to save resources in classic reactionary moves. Here the real schism.
voxic11 5y ago
Sure your normal IC-turned-manager is not like this, but such people usually have more engineering oriented management responsibilities, they are not the ones making the decisions about "return to office" or "hybrid work".
maerF0x0 5y ago
> I'm an IC-turned-manager. Let's all recall that IC-Turned-Manager is a rarity in the general management space. Engineers choosing from amongst their own is an anomaly, not the norm, across many industries.
- oblio 5y ago
  The vast majority of tech middle managers I've met are former engineers.
  - kodah 5y ago
    If they didn't reach Staff I've usually discovered IC-turned-managers are about as good as a non-technical manager. Being a "former engineer" is not really good enough to build empathy for the process of engineering.
  - maerF0x0 5y ago
    And this is common in tech hence why i said > across many industries.
kodah 5y ago
> There are definitely some bad managers out there, but generally managers aren't that different than ICs in terms of motivation ime, bad managers are more common than decent managers. Also, most managers are not IC-turned-manager at least at any significantly high level.
futureshock 5y ago
I do want to point out that I said, leader, not manager. There is a certain power hunger that concentrates as you move up the ladder. Line level managers, especially in tech are, as you say, servant-leaders with a prime focus on keeping engineers happy. They are not the people making decisions on return to office. Walk up that ladder a bit more and you will see more of the sociopathy that is a specific quality of kings and CEOs.

akkartik 5y ago

I'm curious what your take is on: * Whether people should go into work * Where the pressure to go into work comes from in an org

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> * Whether people should go into work I work remote. I manage remote teams. I love it and I think it's great. But it's definitely not for everyone. A lot of people can't handle remote work. A lot of people don't have the self discipline to get work done without being in a social context (some of my remote team members work in coworking spaces as a workaround). A lot of people see remote as an opportunity to isolate from the team and dodge important communications. I think we need to get past this idea that one type of work is best for everyone and every team. When people try to say that remote is superior, they don't know what they're talking about. It's one the most "it depends" topics out there right now. > * Where the pressure to go into work comes from in an org Let me answer this indirectly: If companies saw a net increase in productivity and employee well-being from going remote, they'd be falling all over themselves to go all-in on remote work. Getting rid of office space and being able to hire anywhere is a huge advantage and every executive team I know was enthralled with the idea. So why would they want to retain expensive office space and limit themselves to hiring only nearby candidates? It's because for every 1 person who's great at remote work, there may be 1-3 others who aren't doing well at all. Juniors and new hires suffer the most because ramp-up times become extremely slow when the rest of the team is isolated away working on their tasks and uninterested in talking to anyone they don't have to. Interpersonal conflicts are way up because people misinterpret things as insulting or offensive because they can't see the other person's face. Fights and arguments break out everywhere because there's little difference between the company Slack and the other Discords where the person alt+tabs to argue with people. In short: Remote is hard, creates more work for management, is detrimental to juniors and new hires, and doesn't work for everyone. If a company is willing to invest a lot of money and time into hiring more managers to deal with it and churning through hires who can't handle remote, it can work. But it's often easier and happier for everyone to just go into the office a day or two per week to resolve these issues in person. Even as a remote team, flying everyone into the same location is hands down the easiest way to get people communicating efficiently and treating each other as human team members instead of Slack screen name enemies. Remote is hard.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  "why would they want to retain expensive office space" The increasing value of property and the need to collectively keep office space prices high is a big reason. Do you know how much Apple or Google's campus is worth?
- greedo 5y ago
  We own three campuses. There's no financial benefit to keep them since most of our staff can work remotely just fine. We've had two straight record years in revenue and profit, but the pride of owning these white elephants makes people come to bad conclusions.
- lytefm 5y ago
  > Remote is hard, creates more work for management, is detrimental to juniors and new hires, and doesn't work for everyone. I agree. I really enjoy working hybrid myself - going to the office every now and then to have some human contact, otherwise working from home or wherever I am. It also depends a lot in the living situation: A 20-something single who lives in the center anyways might enjoy going to the office, a married 40-something in the suburb would rather work from home all the time.

jvanderbot 5y ago

Agree 100% (as an IC-turned-manager myself). 5 years ago, I exercised my privilege (as an IC with a lenient boss), to work from another state for a few months. During that time, I dialed into meetings that were otherwise held in person. My experience: - Nobody remembered to ask me for my opinion, so I was constantly interrupting - Often, people just forgot to open the telcon, so I was ignored on hold - Often, people forgot to present the slides / visuals over telcon as well as the projector, so I had to interrupt them and cause 5 minute delays - Whiteboard designs? Flat out of scope - Try pitching ideas over the phone to a room full of stakeholders. They treat you like a spam caller A project I was leading for a new design was "killed" and "revived" with exactly the same team, but another (onsite) person swapped out for my role. That person is now in charge of the project, and it's a big, big deal, with attention all the way up to Washington. His career is skyrocketing because of this. Working hybrid may not be a scam in and of itself, but I suspect someone with 10+ years experience managing recognizes that all remote, or all in person, are both tenable solutions, but hybrid will cause a separate-and-not-equal workforce schism.

kkfx 5y ago
Sorry for the rude intervention but... > Nobody remembered to ask me for my opinion, so I was constantly interrupting that's not much because of you or others but the actual management organization is crap. The basic idea is have a workforce, at any level, made of stereotypical Ford-model workers, those who ancient Greek's call "useful idiots", people just able to work but mentally unable to be citizens, to be adult, autonomous. So there is the idea of creating a hierarchy of shepherds to keep the flock "as it should" and that does not work because such social model does not work. A proof? We have not invented anything really new in the last decades. We have improved anything, popularized anything, but nothing really new have seen the light. Now for the first time in human history after industrial revolution began we see a decline in quality of anything not because of scarcity or war but because of a system that can't anymore sustain itself having consumed itself from the inside. That's the classic failure of merchants societies: they are skilled in making money, but they only exists if there are some others society to commerce with, different society who develop and produce. Now that everything is commerce... > I suspect someone with 10+ years experience managing recognizes that all remote, or all in person, are both tenable solutions, but hybrid will cause a separate-and-not-equal workforce schism. I think it's already there: most talented escape, lest talented start the so called big resignation with vague autarkic attempts doomed to fail and resulting in a mass of future new poor ready to be inserted in the WEF 2030's agenda new society. Being in person offer benefits form human interaction we can't have on remote BUT have the downside of the physical location need. In a changing world people want freedom and actual cities does not offer that and have no visible chance of improvement. Remote allow living in good place with enough services at interesting costs (at least in theory, in practice for some a bad cold shower of reality for others) trading the less benefit from human interaction to a far more comfortable life. In a society designed around the panem et circense concept at the start of a scarcity era most prefer the circense in absence seen the scarcity of panem... Beside that, at another level, economy of scale have reached the tipping point of density where we are now too dense and so the scale benefit drop crushed by the density costs. A reset is needed and nobody want to be in the places to be resetted and no one know how will be the new world. So no one want brace the new trying to save resources in classic reactionary moves. Here the real schism.

voxic11 5y ago

Sure your normal IC-turned-manager is not like this, but such people usually have more engineering oriented management responsibilities, they are not the ones making the decisions about "return to office" or "hybrid work".

maerF0x0 5y ago

> I'm an IC-turned-manager. Let's all recall that IC-Turned-Manager is a rarity in the general management space. Engineers choosing from amongst their own is an anomaly, not the norm, across many industries.

oblio 5y ago
The vast majority of tech middle managers I've met are former engineers.
- kodah 5y ago
  If they didn't reach Staff I've usually discovered IC-turned-managers are about as good as a non-technical manager. Being a "former engineer" is not really good enough to build empathy for the process of engineering.
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  And this is common in tech hence why i said > across many industries.

kodah 5y ago

> There are definitely some bad managers out there, but generally managers aren't that different than ICs in terms of motivation ime, bad managers are more common than decent managers. Also, most managers are not IC-turned-manager at least at any significantly high level.

futureshock 5y ago

I do want to point out that I said, leader, not manager. There is a certain power hunger that concentrates as you move up the ladder. Line level managers, especially in tech are, as you say, servant-leaders with a prime focus on keeping engineers happy. They are not the people making decisions on return to office. Walk up that ladder a bit more and you will see more of the sociopathy that is a specific quality of kings and CEOs.