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I worked at a really big tech company on a tight knit operations team. The boss quit so the put the VP of eng in charge of our team. He never once came to our t

I worked at a really big tech company on a tight knit operations team. The boss quit so the put the VP of eng in charge of our team. He never once came to our team meeting, never once told any of us what to do, asked us to do anything or in any way interacted with us except to say hi and have a beer if we were hanging out on Friday. That wasn’t fucked up at all. We were all really good at what we did (with the possible exception of me, I was just trying to keep up), we identified what needed to be done, prioritized it and got it done. In other words we self-organized. That’s a sign of a good company. It was an environment that caused me to step up and take responsibility for things two levels above my pay grade. Not because I’m ambitious, but because things needed doing and I was the only one available to take care of them. It’s funny that the author lists that as a way for a company to be fucked up. I’ve worked for a lot of fucked up companies. That’s one of the stories I tell my partners now about my hand-off management style. People will step up if given the opportunity. And if they can’t, it’ll rapidly become apparent and they’ll go find another company and somebody who wants to boss them around.

quelltext 4y ago
That's just not how it works for many teams. You said: "Not because I’m ambitious, but because things needed doing and I was the only one available to take care of them." But this person doesn't always exist. Or that person might exist but might not want to "take care" of the team as they don't enjoy that or feel overwhelmed by it. But in the end your team didn't self organize. You stepped up to organize it. In many cases this only goes a certain distance, in many it doesn't and somebody needs to make the management decisions as a manager and understand what the team is struggling with.
nickjj 4y ago
I think certain types of teams are well suited for this when your customers are technical staff members. "Operations" is kind of a loaded title because it could be 10 different things but I'm guessing in your context it's at least related to tech because the VP of engineering was put in charge. If your job is to make the lives of your engineers easier by setting up infra and workflows to let them ship things faster and safer then you're kind of the perfect person to figure out what to work on because you're at ground zero experiencing everything first hand. Every bottleneck and problem you encounter is prime pickings for something to work on. Then you as a team (or as a solo person in this role) can figure out what to take on next. This is the type of role I'm in now as a 1 person team with mostly free reign to pick what to work on and it's great. All of the devs basically treat me as a consultant, then I help identify ways to improve things and implement those solutions. I mostly focus on infra and deployment related topics. I regularly bounce ideas off the person I report to and we figure out long term goals together (a very positive experience), but day to day or week to week I self regulate my tasks to move towards the high level goals.

quelltext 4y ago

That's just not how it works for many teams. You said: "Not because I’m ambitious, but because things needed doing and I was the only one available to take care of them." But this person doesn't always exist. Or that person might exist but might not want to "take care" of the team as they don't enjoy that or feel overwhelmed by it. But in the end your team didn't self organize. You stepped up to organize it. In many cases this only goes a certain distance, in many it doesn't and somebody needs to make the management decisions as a manager and understand what the team is struggling with.

nickjj 4y ago

I think certain types of teams are well suited for this when your customers are technical staff members. "Operations" is kind of a loaded title because it could be 10 different things but I'm guessing in your context it's at least related to tech because the VP of engineering was put in charge. If your job is to make the lives of your engineers easier by setting up infra and workflows to let them ship things faster and safer then you're kind of the perfect person to figure out what to work on because you're at ground zero experiencing everything first hand. Every bottleneck and problem you encounter is prime pickings for something to work on. Then you as a team (or as a solo person in this role) can figure out what to take on next. This is the type of role I'm in now as a 1 person team with mostly free reign to pick what to work on and it's great. All of the devs basically treat me as a consultant, then I help identify ways to improve things and implement those solutions. I mostly focus on infra and deployment related topics. I regularly bounce ideas off the person I report to and we figure out long term goals together (a very positive experience), but day to day or week to week I self regulate my tasks to move towards the high level goals.