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As a manager, you simply don’t have the time to dig into technical issues. You can’t take uninterrupted 4 hours to enter into the code and debug something. When

by ploum 4y ago

As a manager, you simply don’t have the time to dig into technical issues. You can’t take uninterrupted 4 hours to enter into the code and debug something. When you are a new manager with a deep experience of the technology, you don’t see it immediately. But the longer you manage, the more your experience become irrelevant (for example: my team switched from Angular to React. I never did any React and there was no way for a manager to dig into it at the same rate as the team). It took me two jobs as a manager to realise that, at least in software development, a manager’s job is to pretend. To make uninformed decisions and lead the team without understanding anything of what is happening. You also spend your time negotiating with upper levels that want everything without even thinking about the implications (I’m not talking about costs or time, I really had meeting with really high levels managers who asked me, straight in the eyes, to make "a solution with all the advantages and without the disadvantages" and they were very proud of their line). I learned that very high level management meeting are dumb and boring, that those people don’t even have the slightest clue what they are talking about and spend hours discussing micromanagement discussion (I attended a very high-level meeting where I replaced my n+1 and they litteraly spent one hour discussing who should send an email to X to ask him to send an email to Y. I took notes of that one because I feared nobody would believe me). But I also reached the conclusion that managers are necessary. I even had a very good one who told me after one week: "I’m a manager, I have no idea how you are doing your thing. My job is to set a goal with you then your job is to ask me every time I could help with your job. Also, I’m here to insulate you from the administrative shit". I tried to become a manager like that. I also lived by the credo: "If anything fails in my team, it’s my fault, I will not put the fault to individuals in my team". I learned that this work only with very good teams and independant individuals. Some people need to be taken by the hand and a good manager will offer psychological help. But this only work if the layer above is also working that way. I ended fighting with my N+1 because they absolutely wanted to fire someone from my team. Needless to say, a CEO and friend told me I was not a good manager. I would never become one if I didn’t change the way I was looking at things. So, in conclusion : there are good managers. But they do not last long. They either quit or becomes bad managers which is the only way to climb in the hierarchy : lick upper levels asses and tell them that any problem is because of the individuals in your team. If you do that properly, you will never stay long enough in a team to have any impact anyway. Don’t try to deliver. Pretend you do it by saying it in a powerpoint. And tell your developers that everything is due yesterday.

tester457 4y ago
> Needless to say, a CEO and friend told me I was not a good manager. I would never become one if I didn’t change the way I was looking at things. They rather you be the bad manager that plays the hierarchy game?
- ploum 4y ago
  Yep. But it was told otherwise. Most that a manager should be a salesman. You should always sell the work of your team (to other team, to upper management). Inside my team, I should put more pressure on the underperformers. For him, it was positive (and putting pressure is a way to make employee perform so they are happy with their own work. Pressure can be done in a good way like "motivation"). For me, selling is mostly lying and putting "good" pressure is hypocrisy. The strange part is that I realized that he was right. People love him. I’m just not a good fit for any hierarchical structure.
parasubvert 4y ago
You had me up until the end, when things got pretty cynical: not entirely wrong, but also few companies have purely bad managers, it's an evolving mix of good and bad. A company with mostly bad management that is all pretend eventually fails. I best liked Peter Drucker's description of a manager's job: "to make individual strengths productive, and weaknesses irrelevant". It's less about the specific tech, and more about the core practices that really haven't changed too much over 10-15 years. And the higher up you go, it's more about the business and less about the tech, and those practices change even less often.

by ploum 4y ago

tester457 4y ago

> Needless to say, a CEO and friend told me I was not a good manager. I would never become one if I didn’t change the way I was looking at things. They rather you be the bad manager that plays the hierarchy game?

ploum 4y ago
Yep. But it was told otherwise. Most that a manager should be a salesman. You should always sell the work of your team (to other team, to upper management). Inside my team, I should put more pressure on the underperformers. For him, it was positive (and putting pressure is a way to make employee perform so they are happy with their own work. Pressure can be done in a good way like "motivation"). For me, selling is mostly lying and putting "good" pressure is hypocrisy. The strange part is that I realized that he was right. People love him. I’m just not a good fit for any hierarchical structure.

parasubvert 4y ago

You had me up until the end, when things got pretty cynical: not entirely wrong, but also few companies have purely bad managers, it's an evolving mix of good and bad. A company with mostly bad management that is all pretend eventually fails. I best liked Peter Drucker's description of a manager's job: "to make individual strengths productive, and weaknesses irrelevant". It's less about the specific tech, and more about the core practices that really haven't changed too much over 10-15 years. And the higher up you go, it's more about the business and less about the tech, and those practices change even less often.