3 ms·

The best managers I have had are the ones I've rarely seen. Don't misunderstand, I see them all the time, I just don't have to interact with them all the time.

The best managers I have had are the ones I've rarely seen. Don't misunderstand, I see them all the time, I just don't have to interact with them all the time. They aren't in every meeting, every SCRUM, every this or that. They check in routinely and ask if I'm okay, then step back out of the way. We have scheduled 1:1s once per month so that come reviews there are no surprises. They also step in when a team member is struggling and rehome that person. If you're a manager, you absolutely suck at your job if, come reviews, the person you review is shocked about their review. Some people are dense, I get that, but you don't get a pass for that.

brazzledazzle 4y ago
The worst manager I've ever had let her ego and control issues spiral to the point that she demanded that every member of the team invite her to every call, forward every meeting and (I kid you not) add her to every direct message we had in ms teams. She would join two calls simultaneously instead of rescheduling or delegating and thought telling the other participants as much made her look important instead of someone with poor time management skills. She would quietly work with other teams on projects right up until the point that real implementation work needed to be done–committing to designs, tasks and technologies without consulting anyone on the team. This would inevitably lead to mistakes due to outdated information or lack of knowledge and we'd essentially need to redo discovery and planning with the added bonus of getting it done fast enough that it wouldn't interfere with her committed deadline that no longer matched the original scope she based it on. If we somehow got invited to any of these early meetings she would ask for us to be removed. She had to have involvement in nearly every decision and if she had an opinion/interest/idea she would make the call no matter how low level or inconsequential it was. She clearly wanted us to function as programmable robotic automatons that followed her exact specifications instead of engineers to trust with building solutions or achieving goals. She would even tell us how many points to assign to our stories. But I think the most egregious thing was her need to control us even in company hackathons and other empowerment initiatives where we were supposed to be given complete autonomy. If we wanted to participate in a hackathon we had to join under her team and work on her idea. Keep in mind that this person was our manager and had the power to have us work her ideas every other day of the year. The idea of us building what we wanted or working outside of her control for even a few days was intolerable. She was intensely concerned with the perception of others but failed to realize that joining or taking control of every little thing reflected poorly on her ability to delegate and manage her team. Her enormous ego stopped her from trusting her team's decision making and she had such an overinflated sense of self-importance she didn't pick up on the fact that the bottleneck she made of herself had earned her a reputation for never delivering.

brazzledazzle 4y ago

The worst manager I've ever had let her ego and control issues spiral to the point that she demanded that every member of the team invite her to every call, forward every meeting and (I kid you not) add her to every direct message we had in ms teams. She would join two calls simultaneously instead of rescheduling or delegating and thought telling the other participants as much made her look important instead of someone with poor time management skills. She would quietly work with other teams on projects right up until the point that real implementation work needed to be done–committing to designs, tasks and technologies without consulting anyone on the team. This would inevitably lead to mistakes due to outdated information or lack of knowledge and we'd essentially need to redo discovery and planning with the added bonus of getting it done fast enough that it wouldn't interfere with her committed deadline that no longer matched the original scope she based it on. If we somehow got invited to any of these early meetings she would ask for us to be removed. She had to have involvement in nearly every decision and if she had an opinion/interest/idea she would make the call no matter how low level or inconsequential it was. She clearly wanted us to function as programmable robotic automatons that followed her exact specifications instead of engineers to trust with building solutions or achieving goals. She would even tell us how many points to assign to our stories. But I think the most egregious thing was her need to control us even in company hackathons and other empowerment initiatives where we were supposed to be given complete autonomy. If we wanted to participate in a hackathon we had to join under her team and work on her idea. Keep in mind that this person was our manager and had the power to have us work her ideas every other day of the year. The idea of us building what we wanted or working outside of her control for even a few days was intolerable. She was intensely concerned with the perception of others but failed to realize that joining or taking control of every little thing reflected poorly on her ability to delegate and manage her team. Her enormous ego stopped her from trusting her team's decision making and she had such an overinflated sense of self-importance she didn't pick up on the fact that the bottleneck she made of herself had earned her a reputation for never delivering.