15 ms·

Principles of Engineering Management

465 points by darccio 4y ago

ttoinou 4y ago
Quite naïve. Nothing has been said about what employees need to follow. It is like, everything they can do is perfect, the manager is always the one who needs to work on the relationship, and there are no criteria to select / stop working with employees (i.e. those rules will work with any team).
- xbar 4y ago
  It says none of that. At worst, it is incomplete as an instruction manual, but it's a fine list of starting principles for thinking about humans doing work.
- drewcoo 4y ago
  Well it's not called Principles of Engineering Non-Management.
faangiq 4y ago
The real rules: 1) fuck your team. 2) look good to your superior.
tchalla 4y ago
Many of these, could be principles for life.
Ozzie_osman 4y ago
> Optimize work distribution > Managers have a portfolio of work that the business needs and people with work preferences. Optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, and/or advancement. Performance is contextual; set people up to shine. I find this so important. A good manager has a good mental map of the business's short-term and long-term goals, and a corresponding map of each person on the team's short-term and long-term goals (and strengths/weaknesses) . This map requires constant updating and refining. The magic happens in finding the right fit between all of that.
- lostcolony 4y ago
  I'll comment that this is also something that you can partially delegate to the team. A healthy team has a good understanding of one another's strengths and weaknesses just from working with each other. A manager should be trying to collect that feedback, as well as use their own, then work with each member of the team to determine what opportunities they need, to either demonstrate a strength, or work on a weakness, and then create space to socialize those needs. With the team aware of what one another needs, they're able to all be on the lookout to identify and highlight those opportunities. Once the items the team definitively owns are being optimally allocated by the team, the manager can look for opportunities outside of the team's domain. They don't even need to be for specific individuals, but things that the team would be able to reasonably help with; then pitching them to the team, the team can self-organize to determine who it's an opportunity for (and then further break it down; maybe person A needs the opportunity to lead a cross team initiative, but person B needs the opportunity to dive deep into a technical implementation, style of thing).
- heisenbit 4y ago
  The key job of a manager is to say no. It is not to optimize the work distribution but to control the scope of the work that is done. A critical distinction between manager and leader is the former has more focus managing shape of the playing field and the rules while the latter is more concerned about pushing towards results. Last but not least management is about gaining, using and maintaining power. Without it saying no is not possible.
the_arun 4y ago
IMHO, we should add “Be Human first, everything else comes later”.
- AlwaysRock 4y ago
  100%. I've worked for a lot of bad managers and 2 good ones. 1 of the good ones wasnt a great human but an incredible teacher. The other was an okay teacher but an incredible human. The later I'm still in contact with and we've stayed in touch for 5 plus years. A lot of what I'm looking for in a boss is just someone who kind and understanding. It's shocking how low that is on most managers agendas.
  - ttoinou 4y ago
    Maybe it's not just about the managers but also how do employees treat the relationship with their managers. i.e. it's a two way street
    - skeeter2020 4y ago
      It is, but I think it's the manager's job to be the first to take the emotional risks, and continue to do so even when they're not immediately reciprocated.
      - ttoinou 4y ago
        If the other doesn't know you moved forward, why would he/she change his behavior ? It looks like the relationship will continue as it began forever - one sided.
        chrsig 4y ago
        Well, if you're doing a good job of treating the person...y'know, as a person, then you can ask them to change their behavior. And generally they'll be amenable to reciprocate. Also: Why doesn't the other person know you've "moved forward"? Try communicating that you have.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thecryptodiver 4y ago
This is such a great read! 100% agreed!
deeptote 4y ago
This is typical, MBA armchair psychology. Here's the real Principals of Engineering Management, according to pretty much every middle manager, director, and vp I've ever worked with: 1. Be caviling and pedantic, so you can reinforce your position of petty power. 2. Contribute exactly zero code, infrastructure, etc. Basically, anything that actually provides value to the engineers or the customers, you don't touch. 3. Put at least a couple meetings on the calendar every day of every engineer that they don't need to be at to remind them you rule over their time. 4. Push nebulous "goals", then have very set goals when it comes time to promote/give a pay raise an engineer and then insist they aren't quite there. 5. Put engineers on-call instead of hiring support staff, again to remind the engineer that you own their time, even when they're not at work. 6. Constantly seek updates from engineers, so many in fact that they can't complete the work on time, then promptly blame the engineers for not delivering. "Managers" are people with business degrees who failed out of anything technical. Real managers are architects and PMs who actually understand the product and the technical lift it takes to actually make things happen. They don't concern themselves with your comings-and-goings, but whether you can get things done or not.
- onion2k 4y ago
  according to pretty much every middle manager, director, and vp I've ever worked with You might be right and every manager is terrible, but it's worth noting that the common denominator in all of these interactions is you.
  - deeptote 4y ago
- dboreham 4y ago
  > Put engineers on-call instead of hiring support staff Note that in some jurisdictions (including the USA) this is problematic from a labor law perspective.
  - wnolens 4y ago
    I really wish. But it is the standard. 90% of jobs I see involve building some online service. On call is as part of the job as writing code is.
photochemsyn 4y ago
This sounds pretty good, all these are qualities anyone would want in their manager if they had a job doing 'the critical path of execution'. There's few things more frustrating than continually having to halt in the middle of one task to jump over to another task because someone's pants are on fire. Sure it happens, but it should be the exception not the norm. However, there's another side to the manager's job that doesn't seem to be addressed - interfacing upwards with whatever layers link to owners, founders, the board, shareholders, etc. How does that exactly work out in practice? Let's say leadership makes what you think are really stupid decisions with disastrous longterm consequences (ex: Boeing 737 MAX design process, Google signing up with China to build Dragonfly, etc.). What do you do? Pour gasoline on yourself and set yourself on fire in protest, or roll your eyes in despair and proceed to assign your team to the task?
- 0xbadcafebee 4y ago
  - Choose and limit your battles - Provide data to make an argument - Put your concerns in writing - Challenge your manager to ask their bosses tough questions - Form coalitions with other managers to try to solve problems together - Ask for a skip level (IMHO once a quarter, not just to address business problems but to maintain good relationships) - If your employees are still at risk and upper management does nothing, threaten to quit
  - joshbetz 4y ago
    Be honest with the people who report to you about your feelings. You don't have to go out of your way to stir up trouble, but if people come to you with concerns that you share, it can be very helpful to know that you're not alone and your manager is on your side.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate the hard work of being a manager. Don't get me wrong: I think "facilitate wellbeing" and similar tidbits are valid advice. Likewise, a manager who chooses to not facilitate wellbeing would clearly be in the wrong. But when you get into management you realize that the hard work isn't waking up and deciding to facilitate wellbeing. The hard work often involves making unpopular decisions, or telling someone "no" when their pet request wouldn't be in the best interests of the team, or defusing interpersonal conflict among two team members who have been feuding for months. These feel-good blog posts seem rather vacuous after being in the trenches of management for several years. Again, not because the advice is bad or wrong, but because it's just a lot of text around the basics of being a decent human being. Learning how to do the hard things about management or how to make unpopular but necessary decisions is something that you won't learn from the average blog post or LinkedIn post, largely because these function more as personal branding pieces than actual advice. In my experience, the best management advice comes from talking to the best managers you know personally. Online, the most practical management advice comes on smaller forums where people are either anonymous (and therefore less interested in personal brand building) or older and accomplished (and therefore not worried about blowback impacting their career). The type of feel-good blog posts or LinkedIn blurbs that people associate with their personal brand don't really add much value after you've read 5-10 articles saying the exact same aphorisms.
- jahbrewski 4y ago
  Good feedback here. Do you have any example “smaller forums” that you have found particularly helpful?
  - superzadeh 4y ago
    teams at work is a good one: https://bunch.ai/slack-community https://bunch.ai/slack-community
nolawi89 4y ago
this seems basic to me
havkom 4y ago
As an engineering manager myself I concur with all the points. Some of them are difficult though, for example: “optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, …” and “ Managers with excellent execution skills and deep domain knowledge must resist the urge to present solutions to their reports.” To what extent should one allow suboptimal solutions, failure or allow employees to do things inefficiently with their “favorite tech stack” (in cases where it does not add business value) ?
- dominotw 4y ago
  > To what extent should one allow suboptimal solutions 100% of the time. After all you can't count yourself being there to 'save the day' every single time, so whats the point of interfering here and there randomly.
  - havkom 4y ago
    I agree (with some reservations, see my other reply to my post)
- havkom 4y ago
  My approach so far is to be very very allowing —- until any failure becomes apparent and it can “naturally be discussed” (or it causes problems with colleagues in the group). This can be quite stressful though — I do not think the people reporting to me understands how much energy is spent as a manager negotiating with others in order to give the team and team members the most space/maneuverability that is possible.
  - chrsig 4y ago
    > I do not think the people reporting to me understands how much energy is spent as a manager negotiating with others in order to give the team and team members the most space/maneuverability that is possible Speaking from experience as an IC -- managers do an absolutely terrible job of surfacing what they're working on. What are you doing to broadcast your efforts? If you don't tell them what you're doing, you can't expect them to know if you don't tell them.
tschellenbach 4y ago
Lot of misconceptions here that cause teams to underperform. 1. Managing comes first. (Nope, as a manager your are primarily responsible for ensuring a good outcome. As your title goes from manager, senior, higher to VP etc this becomes more important. Lower job titles you get paid to "do the work", higher titles are about "achieve outcome".) In the current market you'll often run into team members that don't perform. I see this so often where leads think that they have to "manage" and not do the work and the result is them and their team failing 2. Facilitate wellbeing. That's nice. But your primary responsibility is to A. Achieve the goal. B. hold people accountable to an acceptable level of performance Give credit, take blame: That's a good one. This post is just full of vague language that doesn't hold anyone accountable. Sucks to be an IC on that team, thinking everything is going well and eventually end up having whole teams being fired since your manager didn't set the right pace.
- malfist 4y ago
  If you supplant your team and do the work yourself, you're not helping the team perform. Nobody is learning lessons and everyone, including yourself will just be more stressed and less satisfied with the job. If you can't trust your team to do the work, then you shouldn't be managing those people. Management is about being a force multiplier, and not the force.
  - throwawaythekey 4y ago
    What team size would you say this applies to? At the moment I have flexibility in how many people I hire underneath me and would like the team to remain small enough where I can be both a force multiplier and part of the force. The goal is to be an elite small squad. The other option is to hire a larger number of people, handle more of the project scope, and cease being an IC. However I'm new to being a formal manager and am guessing this would probably be bad for my sanity.
    - NhanH 4y ago
      You can't do that at any team size. The role you was looking for is generally called a "lead" role, which has different responsibility than manager role. It's mostly because of conflicting mindset and commitment. As manager, meeting is your tool to get work done (source: High output management by Andrew Groove, I didn't make this up, and I didn't understand it until after I had to become a manager either). As an IC, meeting is a big giant distraction to you. You basically can't get the two type of works to mix together. You will always be blocking other members of your team in your IC task. And this doesn't get started with the different mindset yet (For example, you have to watch/ teach people fixing ugly code, as opposed to doing it yourself. And there will be some point you have to give up asking polishing certain piece of code, due to the members not interested, incapable or other reasons). Being a manager and part of the force should only be a transitional period.
queuebert 4y ago
I like how modern society has created a special caste for sociopaths and then secondarily created an entire industry around teaching the sociopaths how to act normal.
osigurdson 4y ago
“Distribute problems, not solutions” makes sense. Making sure that the problems are the right ones to work on is pretty important as well.
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
We are putting too much into the word "management" - supervision (did you turn up on time, are you capable of doing the basic functions needed) - coaching (this team needs someone to do X, but I have two Ys. One goes or one changes) - administration (budgets, projects, scheduling etc). Certainly the part most at threat from software - looking at you Project Manahers - strategic decision making (yeah that's the part everyone wants to do because it's the big bucks with years before anyone can judge you. It is also oddly under threat - not from software but from voting - my guess is most strategy is going to be voted for in twenty years. don't like the strategy - binding vote at the AGM for new Board. would save Elon the effort of buying twitter) All four of these (and I am sure MBA text books have better selections) are wildly different, at different levels of an org and need different skill sets and people. just thinking we could ever ask one person to get on with it all is crazy.
- acjohnson55 4y ago
  The job of being a manager is to understand the leadership roles that need to be fulfilled within the team and to figure out how to make sure they're all performed. You don't have to embody them all yourself. You are accountable for anything you delegate, however.
- travisgriggs 4y ago
  This resonates with a basic "anti management" feeling I have. I don't hate managers as people. I often really like them. But I hate what the title "manager" does to people. Like "domestic engineers" and "waste engineers" of the past, it's basically become a title grab for "get paid more money." In particular for managers, it usually establishes a "the principal said I can climb higher than you on the jungle gym, and from this point, I'm to wield authority over how you play on said gym." They may even protest "how bad it is up here" and "how I'm suffering for you." What I really wish would happen, is that we'd abolish the title "manager" as overly vague and oft abused, and instead just call it what it is. - Public Relations (go to meetings) - Clerk (push papers, manage minutia) - Meeting Caller/Planner - etc Anecdotally, an off the cuff euphemism from my Advanced Fluid Dynamics Professor in the early 90's still holds too true all to oft in my experience. He had great rapport with our class of ~100 students. After one test, the class was collectively whining about grading to a curve. After humoring us for a bit, he said something like "Look, you A students, you're going to go out in industry for a bit, but the lack of idealism is going to frustrate you, and you'll be back here soon with me. You B students know what compromise is. When it's good enough. That's why you're going to make great engineers." And then he turned to begin his lecture like that was it. And someone yelled out "wait, what about us C students." "Management" was his terse reply. (Apologies to the venn intersection of managers <-> HN readers <-> "A" students.)
brianhorakh 4y ago
As an introverted high iq nominal eq person with an execution bias I routinely find companies that are keen to move me into senior leadership roles. This post reinforces why I want to work for a good manager but also how I have zero desire to become one.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Irishsteve 4y ago
I’ve been managing a while and a striking difference between profitable established companies versus quasi profitable growth companies is the culture of delivering value. It goes without saying that you want your reports to thrive at work, and as a manager you want to build a great atmosphere and culture. But what I often miss from posts like this is focusing on the value the group of individuals is meant to create (maybe it’s implied).
jjmorrison 4y ago
Many of these principles may work, but they are not the goal. The biggest confusion I see in new and experienced managers is the point of their job -> maximizing their teams productivity. It's not clear from the article that the author has realized this.
lkrubner 4y ago
"Facilitate wellbeing" This seems like a reasonable goal, but it is not actionable advice. "Prefer one on one meetings" is actionable, and it tends to enable you, as a manager, to facilitate wellbeing. Forgive me for quoting my book, but this example is worth thinking about: ------- Great news! You just raised a round of investment! You are flush with cash! Now you can hit those ambitious goals that you excitedly promised to your investors. In six months, you can go back and tell them that you totally crushed the numbers — not only did you make your milestones, you blew past them. The investors will be so pleased! Now we just need to tell your head of marketing to ramp up the customer acquisition! Luckily she has a genius for this kind of thing. Oh, wait, here she is now, walking over to you, about to say … … oh damn. She just quit? That was unexpected. One-on-one meetings are useful for many things, one of which is that you aren’t likely to be ambushed by a surprise resignation. There are many personal issues that might cause someone to quit, and these will never, ever be mentioned in a group meeting. Burnout? A divorce? A spouse with a job in a different city? A child failing in school? A parent who is dying? Interest in other kinds of work? No one shouts that stuff in a group meeting, but they might tell you when you are one-on-one.

465 points by darccio 4y ago

Quite naïve. Nothing has been said about what employees need to follow. It is like, everything they can do is perfect, the manager is always the one who needs to work on the relationship, and there are no criteria to select / stop working with employees (i.e. those rules will work with any team).

xbar 4y ago
It says none of that. At worst, it is incomplete as an instruction manual, but it's a fine list of starting principles for thinking about humans doing work.
drewcoo 4y ago
Well it's not called Principles of Engineering Non-Management.

faangiq 4y ago

The real rules: 1) fuck your team. 2) look good to your superior.

tchalla 4y ago

Many of these, could be principles for life.

Ozzie_osman 4y ago

> Optimize work distribution > Managers have a portfolio of work that the business needs and people with work preferences. Optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, and/or advancement. Performance is contextual; set people up to shine. I find this so important. A good manager has a good mental map of the business's short-term and long-term goals, and a corresponding map of each person on the team's short-term and long-term goals (and strengths/weaknesses) . This map requires constant updating and refining. The magic happens in finding the right fit between all of that.

lostcolony 4y ago
I'll comment that this is also something that you can partially delegate to the team. A healthy team has a good understanding of one another's strengths and weaknesses just from working with each other. A manager should be trying to collect that feedback, as well as use their own, then work with each member of the team to determine what opportunities they need, to either demonstrate a strength, or work on a weakness, and then create space to socialize those needs. With the team aware of what one another needs, they're able to all be on the lookout to identify and highlight those opportunities. Once the items the team definitively owns are being optimally allocated by the team, the manager can look for opportunities outside of the team's domain. They don't even need to be for specific individuals, but things that the team would be able to reasonably help with; then pitching them to the team, the team can self-organize to determine who it's an opportunity for (and then further break it down; maybe person A needs the opportunity to lead a cross team initiative, but person B needs the opportunity to dive deep into a technical implementation, style of thing).
heisenbit 4y ago
The key job of a manager is to say no. It is not to optimize the work distribution but to control the scope of the work that is done. A critical distinction between manager and leader is the former has more focus managing shape of the playing field and the rules while the latter is more concerned about pushing towards results. Last but not least management is about gaining, using and maintaining power. Without it saying no is not possible.

the_arun 4y ago

IMHO, we should add “Be Human first, everything else comes later”.

AlwaysRock 4y ago
100%. I've worked for a lot of bad managers and 2 good ones. 1 of the good ones wasnt a great human but an incredible teacher. The other was an okay teacher but an incredible human. The later I'm still in contact with and we've stayed in touch for 5 plus years. A lot of what I'm looking for in a boss is just someone who kind and understanding. It's shocking how low that is on most managers agendas.
- ttoinou 4y ago
  Maybe it's not just about the managers but also how do employees treat the relationship with their managers. i.e. it's a two way street
  - skeeter2020 4y ago
    It is, but I think it's the manager's job to be the first to take the emotional risks, and continue to do so even when they're not immediately reciprocated.
    - ttoinou 4y ago
      If the other doesn't know you moved forward, why would he/she change his behavior ? It looks like the relationship will continue as it began forever - one sided.
      - chrsig 4y ago
        Well, if you're doing a good job of treating the person...y'know, as a person, then you can ask them to change their behavior. And generally they'll be amenable to reciprocate. Also: Why doesn't the other person know you've "moved forward"? Try communicating that you have.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thecryptodiver 4y ago

This is such a great read! 100% agreed!

deeptote 4y ago

This is typical, MBA armchair psychology. Here's the real Principals of Engineering Management, according to pretty much every middle manager, director, and vp I've ever worked with: 1. Be caviling and pedantic, so you can reinforce your position of petty power. 2. Contribute exactly zero code, infrastructure, etc. Basically, anything that actually provides value to the engineers or the customers, you don't touch. 3. Put at least a couple meetings on the calendar every day of every engineer that they don't need to be at to remind them you rule over their time. 4. Push nebulous "goals", then have very set goals when it comes time to promote/give a pay raise an engineer and then insist they aren't quite there. 5. Put engineers on-call instead of hiring support staff, again to remind the engineer that you own their time, even when they're not at work. 6. Constantly seek updates from engineers, so many in fact that they can't complete the work on time, then promptly blame the engineers for not delivering. "Managers" are people with business degrees who failed out of anything technical. Real managers are architects and PMs who actually understand the product and the technical lift it takes to actually make things happen. They don't concern themselves with your comings-and-goings, but whether you can get things done or not.

onion2k 4y ago
according to pretty much every middle manager, director, and vp I've ever worked with You might be right and every manager is terrible, but it's worth noting that the common denominator in all of these interactions is you.
- deeptote 4y ago
dboreham 4y ago
> Put engineers on-call instead of hiring support staff Note that in some jurisdictions (including the USA) this is problematic from a labor law perspective.
- wnolens 4y ago
  I really wish. But it is the standard. 90% of jobs I see involve building some online service. On call is as part of the job as writing code is.

photochemsyn 4y ago

This sounds pretty good, all these are qualities anyone would want in their manager if they had a job doing 'the critical path of execution'. There's few things more frustrating than continually having to halt in the middle of one task to jump over to another task because someone's pants are on fire. Sure it happens, but it should be the exception not the norm. However, there's another side to the manager's job that doesn't seem to be addressed - interfacing upwards with whatever layers link to owners, founders, the board, shareholders, etc. How does that exactly work out in practice? Let's say leadership makes what you think are really stupid decisions with disastrous longterm consequences (ex: Boeing 737 MAX design process, Google signing up with China to build Dragonfly, etc.). What do you do? Pour gasoline on yourself and set yourself on fire in protest, or roll your eyes in despair and proceed to assign your team to the task?

0xbadcafebee 4y ago
- Choose and limit your battles - Provide data to make an argument - Put your concerns in writing - Challenge your manager to ask their bosses tough questions - Form coalitions with other managers to try to solve problems together - Ask for a skip level (IMHO once a quarter, not just to address business problems but to maintain good relationships) - If your employees are still at risk and upper management does nothing, threaten to quit
- joshbetz 4y ago
  Be honest with the people who report to you about your feelings. You don't have to go out of your way to stir up trouble, but if people come to you with concerns that you share, it can be very helpful to know that you're not alone and your manager is on your side.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

I consumed a lot of blog posts like this before becoming a manager. It feels satisfying to read vague principles like this: > Facilitate wellbeing > Personal safety, dignity, and wellbeing of every team member are paramount. Team success is only success if team members feel good about it. But then you become an actual manager and realize that these are largely just feel-good aphorisms that don't really help navigate the hard work of being a manager. Don't get me wrong: I think "facilitate wellbeing" and similar tidbits are valid advice. Likewise, a manager who chooses to not facilitate wellbeing would clearly be in the wrong. But when you get into management you realize that the hard work isn't waking up and deciding to facilitate wellbeing. The hard work often involves making unpopular decisions, or telling someone "no" when their pet request wouldn't be in the best interests of the team, or defusing interpersonal conflict among two team members who have been feuding for months. These feel-good blog posts seem rather vacuous after being in the trenches of management for several years. Again, not because the advice is bad or wrong, but because it's just a lot of text around the basics of being a decent human being. Learning how to do the hard things about management or how to make unpopular but necessary decisions is something that you won't learn from the average blog post or LinkedIn post, largely because these function more as personal branding pieces than actual advice. In my experience, the best management advice comes from talking to the best managers you know personally. Online, the most practical management advice comes on smaller forums where people are either anonymous (and therefore less interested in personal brand building) or older and accomplished (and therefore not worried about blowback impacting their career). The type of feel-good blog posts or LinkedIn blurbs that people associate with their personal brand don't really add much value after you've read 5-10 articles saying the exact same aphorisms.

jahbrewski 4y ago
Good feedback here. Do you have any example “smaller forums” that you have found particularly helpful?
- superzadeh 4y ago
  teams at work is a good one: https://bunch.ai/slack-community https://bunch.ai/slack-community

nolawi89 4y ago

this seems basic to me

havkom 4y ago

As an engineering manager myself I concur with all the points. Some of them are difficult though, for example: “optimize the dual objectives of delivering value to the organization and giving individuals problems that build their skillset, impact, satisfaction, …” and “ Managers with excellent execution skills and deep domain knowledge must resist the urge to present solutions to their reports.” To what extent should one allow suboptimal solutions, failure or allow employees to do things inefficiently with their “favorite tech stack” (in cases where it does not add business value) ?

dominotw 4y ago
> To what extent should one allow suboptimal solutions 100% of the time. After all you can't count yourself being there to 'save the day' every single time, so whats the point of interfering here and there randomly.
- havkom 4y ago
  I agree (with some reservations, see my other reply to my post)
havkom 4y ago
My approach so far is to be very very allowing —- until any failure becomes apparent and it can “naturally be discussed” (or it causes problems with colleagues in the group). This can be quite stressful though — I do not think the people reporting to me understands how much energy is spent as a manager negotiating with others in order to give the team and team members the most space/maneuverability that is possible.
- chrsig 4y ago
  > I do not think the people reporting to me understands how much energy is spent as a manager negotiating with others in order to give the team and team members the most space/maneuverability that is possible Speaking from experience as an IC -- managers do an absolutely terrible job of surfacing what they're working on. What are you doing to broadcast your efforts? If you don't tell them what you're doing, you can't expect them to know if you don't tell them.

tschellenbach 4y ago

Lot of misconceptions here that cause teams to underperform. 1. Managing comes first. (Nope, as a manager your are primarily responsible for ensuring a good outcome. As your title goes from manager, senior, higher to VP etc this becomes more important. Lower job titles you get paid to "do the work", higher titles are about "achieve outcome".) In the current market you'll often run into team members that don't perform. I see this so often where leads think that they have to "manage" and not do the work and the result is them and their team failing 2. Facilitate wellbeing. That's nice. But your primary responsibility is to A. Achieve the goal. B. hold people accountable to an acceptable level of performance Give credit, take blame: That's a good one. This post is just full of vague language that doesn't hold anyone accountable. Sucks to be an IC on that team, thinking everything is going well and eventually end up having whole teams being fired since your manager didn't set the right pace.

malfist 4y ago
If you supplant your team and do the work yourself, you're not helping the team perform. Nobody is learning lessons and everyone, including yourself will just be more stressed and less satisfied with the job. If you can't trust your team to do the work, then you shouldn't be managing those people. Management is about being a force multiplier, and not the force.
- throwawaythekey 4y ago
  What team size would you say this applies to? At the moment I have flexibility in how many people I hire underneath me and would like the team to remain small enough where I can be both a force multiplier and part of the force. The goal is to be an elite small squad. The other option is to hire a larger number of people, handle more of the project scope, and cease being an IC. However I'm new to being a formal manager and am guessing this would probably be bad for my sanity.
  - NhanH 4y ago
    You can't do that at any team size. The role you was looking for is generally called a "lead" role, which has different responsibility than manager role. It's mostly because of conflicting mindset and commitment. As manager, meeting is your tool to get work done (source: High output management by Andrew Groove, I didn't make this up, and I didn't understand it until after I had to become a manager either). As an IC, meeting is a big giant distraction to you. You basically can't get the two type of works to mix together. You will always be blocking other members of your team in your IC task. And this doesn't get started with the different mindset yet (For example, you have to watch/ teach people fixing ugly code, as opposed to doing it yourself. And there will be some point you have to give up asking polishing certain piece of code, due to the members not interested, incapable or other reasons). Being a manager and part of the force should only be a transitional period.

queuebert 4y ago

I like how modern society has created a special caste for sociopaths and then secondarily created an entire industry around teaching the sociopaths how to act normal.

osigurdson 4y ago

“Distribute problems, not solutions” makes sense. Making sure that the problems are the right ones to work on is pretty important as well.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

We are putting too much into the word "management" - supervision (did you turn up on time, are you capable of doing the basic functions needed) - coaching (this team needs someone to do X, but I have two Ys. One goes or one changes) - administration (budgets, projects, scheduling etc). Certainly the part most at threat from software - looking at you Project Manahers - strategic decision making (yeah that's the part everyone wants to do because it's the big bucks with years before anyone can judge you. It is also oddly under threat - not from software but from voting - my guess is most strategy is going to be voted for in twenty years. don't like the strategy - binding vote at the AGM for new Board. would save Elon the effort of buying twitter) All four of these (and I am sure MBA text books have better selections) are wildly different, at different levels of an org and need different skill sets and people. just thinking we could ever ask one person to get on with it all is crazy.

acjohnson55 4y ago
The job of being a manager is to understand the leadership roles that need to be fulfilled within the team and to figure out how to make sure they're all performed. You don't have to embody them all yourself. You are accountable for anything you delegate, however.
travisgriggs 4y ago
This resonates with a basic "anti management" feeling I have. I don't hate managers as people. I often really like them. But I hate what the title "manager" does to people. Like "domestic engineers" and "waste engineers" of the past, it's basically become a title grab for "get paid more money." In particular for managers, it usually establishes a "the principal said I can climb higher than you on the jungle gym, and from this point, I'm to wield authority over how you play on said gym." They may even protest "how bad it is up here" and "how I'm suffering for you." What I really wish would happen, is that we'd abolish the title "manager" as overly vague and oft abused, and instead just call it what it is. - Public Relations (go to meetings) - Clerk (push papers, manage minutia) - Meeting Caller/Planner - etc Anecdotally, an off the cuff euphemism from my Advanced Fluid Dynamics Professor in the early 90's still holds too true all to oft in my experience. He had great rapport with our class of ~100 students. After one test, the class was collectively whining about grading to a curve. After humoring us for a bit, he said something like "Look, you A students, you're going to go out in industry for a bit, but the lack of idealism is going to frustrate you, and you'll be back here soon with me. You B students know what compromise is. When it's good enough. That's why you're going to make great engineers." And then he turned to begin his lecture like that was it. And someone yelled out "wait, what about us C students." "Management" was his terse reply. (Apologies to the venn intersection of managers <-> HN readers <-> "A" students.)

brianhorakh 4y ago

As an introverted high iq nominal eq person with an execution bias I routinely find companies that are keen to move me into senior leadership roles. This post reinforces why I want to work for a good manager but also how I have zero desire to become one.

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Irishsteve 4y ago

I’ve been managing a while and a striking difference between profitable established companies versus quasi profitable growth companies is the culture of delivering value. It goes without saying that you want your reports to thrive at work, and as a manager you want to build a great atmosphere and culture. But what I often miss from posts like this is focusing on the value the group of individuals is meant to create (maybe it’s implied).

jjmorrison 4y ago

Many of these principles may work, but they are not the goal. The biggest confusion I see in new and experienced managers is the point of their job -> maximizing their teams productivity. It's not clear from the article that the author has realized this.

lkrubner 4y ago

"Facilitate wellbeing" This seems like a reasonable goal, but it is not actionable advice. "Prefer one on one meetings" is actionable, and it tends to enable you, as a manager, to facilitate wellbeing. Forgive me for quoting my book, but this example is worth thinking about: ------- Great news! You just raised a round of investment! You are flush with cash! Now you can hit those ambitious goals that you excitedly promised to your investors. In six months, you can go back and tell them that you totally crushed the numbers — not only did you make your milestones, you blew past them. The investors will be so pleased! Now we just need to tell your head of marketing to ramp up the customer acquisition! Luckily she has a genius for this kind of thing. Oh, wait, here she is now, walking over to you, about to say … … oh damn. She just quit? That was unexpected. One-on-one meetings are useful for many things, one of which is that you aren’t likely to be ambushed by a surprise resignation. There are many personal issues that might cause someone to quit, and these will never, ever be mentioned in a group meeting. Burnout? A divorce? A spouse with a job in a different city? A child failing in school? A parent who is dying? Interest in other kinds of work? No one shouts that stuff in a group meeting, but they might tell you when you are one-on-one.