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To counter-anecdote: I've basically never had a bad manager. Several have been exceptional, shielding me from the whims of higher-ups while making sure I don't

To counter-anecdote: I've basically never had a bad manager. Several have been exceptional, shielding me from the whims of higher-ups while making sure I don't burn out by encouraging me to take more time off, etc It probably helps that I've only ever worked at small-ish companies, and it might also help that my managers have pretty much all been technical (either while managing or at some previous time) I would guess, based on limited data, that like most other regressive culture problems this heavily depends on company size

ThalesX 4y ago
I'm glad you had this experience! :) Do you think it's a local vs. global maxima situation? I've had a moment in my life where I had to work 16 hours / day for two months, but in the end it was worth it for me. Time out would have been the wrong advice in that situation. I've also had situations where the whims of higher-ups were misunderstood by my direct manager and direct communication unraveled the mistery. Shielding would have been the wrong help in that situation. What does small-ish mean? I find that most small-ish (what I consider small-ish) companies had a rather flat hierarchy. Managers if anything were contributors and their managerial role was aggregating feedback for the executives so they don't get every IC knocking at their door.
- brundolf 4y ago
  > I've also had situations where the whims of higher-ups were misunderstood by my direct manager and direct communication unraveled the mistery I'd guess this is more likely to happen with non-technical managers. Not sure, but that's a guess > What does small-ish mean? My current company (~300) is by far the largest I've worked at. Next-largest was about 100 > had a rather flat hierarchy Yeah, that tends to be true in my experience and probably contributes to this > Managers if anything were contributors and their managerial role was aggregating feedback for the executives so they don't get every IC knocking at their door Most of my managers have had a tremendous amount of professional humility, which I think is key. The main jobs they've covered (in different portions at different companies, and sometimes with some IC thrown in too) were: - People-manager: make sure people are unblocked, happy, not burning out, working on things that play to their strengths, feeling good about their career and work and not on the verge of leaving. Really a support-role - Shield: go to the stakeholder meetings, field requests made toward the team, manage the jira tickets. Then take all that and digest it, bring it to the team to discuss capacity and direction, and then take the results back to the outside stakeholders and use managerial authority to push back if needed - Product expert: stay in the headspace of the user, features, experiments, overall goals/roadmap, and represent those priorities to the ICs. This one's a fine line- it's easy for them to go off into the clouds and pass things down one-directionally. But when it's collaborative, and we're discussing things as a group with different individual focuses, it works fantastically At my current company we actually have two managers per team- one of the first kind, one of the third kind. This can work really well The most important component for all of these to work well is for the manager to see themselves as a team member, not a boss. These teams (when they worked well) did not operate on a hierarchy unless a tie had to be broken. Normally, we were all just collaborators with different specialties, who brought our different perspectives to the table and advocated for what we saw to be important. I can't emphasize enough how well this works when you can get everybody in that frame of mind
  - dasil003 4y ago
    You are unlikely to find empire builders in that size of company because they are too easily exposed and ousted by competent leadership. The real problems start once there is way too much going on for any one person to track the major initiatives, which I'd say is more in the 500+ realm.
    - brundolf 4y ago
      Yup, there's a reason I don't work at bigger companies :)
ghaff 4y ago
Not that everyone was perfect, but I've only once had a manager that made me go to my skip-level manager and tell him that they needed to put me somewhere/anywhere else or I was out. Didn't hurt that I had a good relationship with skip-level and and he wasn't wowed by my manager either. Did a bunch of legacy stuff for a while but ended up fine.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
> To counter-anecdote: I've basically never had a bad manager. I've never had a bad manager, but I've never had a good one. Or rather I've never had one where I've really noticed what they actually did aside from doing a basic personal assistant / secretary job dealing with administrative paperwork, scheduling meetings, taking notes, conveying status reports between people and teams and tools. I've never had personal issues with my managers and I've always got along well with them and I don't suggest its their fault that their positions exist. I just don't see the value in having organizations structured in a way that necessitates these roles. > shielding me from the whims of higher-ups while making sure I don't burn out by encouraging me to take more time off, etc See this is how they sell themselves, but what it really means is that your engineering firm has whimsical higher-ups who don't understand engineering or even basic people management such that they would kill your productivity and burn you out, forcing the firm to hire another layer of people to protect staff from incompetent upper management. There could be a grain of truth to it, but it just makes the situation even more ridiculous.

ThalesX 4y ago

I'm glad you had this experience! :) Do you think it's a local vs. global maxima situation? I've had a moment in my life where I had to work 16 hours / day for two months, but in the end it was worth it for me. Time out would have been the wrong advice in that situation. I've also had situations where the whims of higher-ups were misunderstood by my direct manager and direct communication unraveled the mistery. Shielding would have been the wrong help in that situation. What does small-ish mean? I find that most small-ish (what I consider small-ish) companies had a rather flat hierarchy. Managers if anything were contributors and their managerial role was aggregating feedback for the executives so they don't get every IC knocking at their door.

brundolf 4y ago
> I've also had situations where the whims of higher-ups were misunderstood by my direct manager and direct communication unraveled the mistery I'd guess this is more likely to happen with non-technical managers. Not sure, but that's a guess > What does small-ish mean? My current company (~300) is by far the largest I've worked at. Next-largest was about 100 > had a rather flat hierarchy Yeah, that tends to be true in my experience and probably contributes to this > Managers if anything were contributors and their managerial role was aggregating feedback for the executives so they don't get every IC knocking at their door Most of my managers have had a tremendous amount of professional humility, which I think is key. The main jobs they've covered (in different portions at different companies, and sometimes with some IC thrown in too) were: - People-manager: make sure people are unblocked, happy, not burning out, working on things that play to their strengths, feeling good about their career and work and not on the verge of leaving. Really a support-role - Shield: go to the stakeholder meetings, field requests made toward the team, manage the jira tickets. Then take all that and digest it, bring it to the team to discuss capacity and direction, and then take the results back to the outside stakeholders and use managerial authority to push back if needed - Product expert: stay in the headspace of the user, features, experiments, overall goals/roadmap, and represent those priorities to the ICs. This one's a fine line- it's easy for them to go off into the clouds and pass things down one-directionally. But when it's collaborative, and we're discussing things as a group with different individual focuses, it works fantastically At my current company we actually have two managers per team- one of the first kind, one of the third kind. This can work really well The most important component for all of these to work well is for the manager to see themselves as a team member, not a boss. These teams (when they worked well) did not operate on a hierarchy unless a tie had to be broken. Normally, we were all just collaborators with different specialties, who brought our different perspectives to the table and advocated for what we saw to be important. I can't emphasize enough how well this works when you can get everybody in that frame of mind
- dasil003 4y ago
  You are unlikely to find empire builders in that size of company because they are too easily exposed and ousted by competent leadership. The real problems start once there is way too much going on for any one person to track the major initiatives, which I'd say is more in the 500+ realm.
  - brundolf 4y ago
    Yup, there's a reason I don't work at bigger companies :)

ghaff 4y ago

Not that everyone was perfect, but I've only once had a manager that made me go to my skip-level manager and tell him that they needed to put me somewhere/anywhere else or I was out. Didn't hurt that I had a good relationship with skip-level and and he wasn't wowed by my manager either. Did a bunch of legacy stuff for a while but ended up fine.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

> To counter-anecdote: I've basically never had a bad manager. I've never had a bad manager, but I've never had a good one. Or rather I've never had one where I've really noticed what they actually did aside from doing a basic personal assistant / secretary job dealing with administrative paperwork, scheduling meetings, taking notes, conveying status reports between people and teams and tools. I've never had personal issues with my managers and I've always got along well with them and I don't suggest its their fault that their positions exist. I just don't see the value in having organizations structured in a way that necessitates these roles. > shielding me from the whims of higher-ups while making sure I don't burn out by encouraging me to take more time off, etc See this is how they sell themselves, but what it really means is that your engineering firm has whimsical higher-ups who don't understand engineering or even basic people management such that they would kill your productivity and burn you out, forcing the firm to hire another layer of people to protect staff from incompetent upper management. There could be a grain of truth to it, but it just makes the situation even more ridiculous.