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Pre-COVID my first management job was working for a company that was chronically understaffed and I ended up spending a good 20% of my time dealing just with hi

by adra 4y ago

Pre-COVID my first management job was working for a company that was chronically understaffed and I ended up spending a good 20% of my time dealing just with hiring for the couple years I was there. Near the end, I could only dedicate about 5% of my time to dev and < 30% to support my largely junior team. The rest of it was wasted on bureaucratic processes that were a vampire of my time. In the end, I didn't think I could honestly protect the team through what was surely to be a painful slide into mediocrity, so opted out. I felt terrible leaving them to whatever came next, but once you realize you're unable to make positive change, it's time to go.

317070 4y ago
What is "meteocracy"?
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  Post-impact constitutional crisis
- yeahbutiguess 4y ago
  A misspelling of mediocrity, I'd assume?
- adra 4y ago
  Autocorrect gone wrong
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rsynnott 4y ago
  Rule by weather forecasters.
  - hardlianotion 4y ago
    By the weather gods themselves.
- potatoinexhaust 4y ago
  Result of a meteocre spellchecker
lucidguppy 4y ago
I wonder if XP helps through pair programming. Managers get to code and also get to mentor juniors at the same time.
- zx8080 4y ago
  Does this happen anywhere? I've never seen any manager personally mentoring juniors.
  - justinclift 4y ago
    Not sure about managers, but (more) senior technical staff and team leaders are supposed to mentor the less experienced technical staff. Whether or not it happens seems to depend on the team. Personally, I like teaching people new stuff so it would often fall to me, on the teams I worked in. ;)
  - johncalvinyoung 4y ago
    Definitely. I'm a team lead (duties: mix of team management, project management, and some IC development), and my mentor is on the management team, and I mentor a junior dev. One of my prior mentors (as a junior dev back then) was the company founder/CEO twenty-five years senior to me. Of course, that founder was one of the originators of XP practice, and ran our company on those principles--pairing, fast feedback loops, and mentorship for all (he's since handed over the company to his #2 who he mentored for a decade, and who is continuing those practices).
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Definitely. I’m an engineering manager (admittedly at a startup) and I pair program with my team all of the time.
- jonfw 4y ago
  Mentorship down the chain of command sounds nice, but for most juniors that's just going to cause anxiety. The most impactful mentors I've had personally were senior developer / tech lead types. My managers were great, but it's just easier to have the "is this a stupid idea" conversation with somebody who doesn't sign your paycheck
kradroy 4y ago
This was my experience at my last company, except compressed into 1 year. Once I joined I learned that 30% of my time would be dedicated to hiring. The company had a pooled hiring process, and I came to hate it. I spent several hours a week reading resumes, interviewing, reading interviewers' feedback, sitting in roundtables, strategizing with recruiters, and if all that went well, pitching candidates to the hiring committee. Then I would sit back, with no control over the comp, and watch the candidate choose another team, largely because my team wasn't a "sexy" team; very critical to business, but not sexy. In the handful of cases where my team was the only option, the candidates would turn down the offer due to "insufficient compensation". The company had a "no negotiation" stance on offers. So once the offer went out, that was that. In my first performance review my manager put "hiring" as an area of improvement. I felt this was a trap and would be used to let me go eventually, in spite of the fact my team grew from 3 to 10 engineers from internal transfers and we were hitting all our deliverables. Between hiring and navigating the terribly siloed corporate structure to build cross-functional teams I had almost no time outside of 1:1s to spend with my own team. It was a really disappointing experience and I felt really bad when I left, because my team and stakeholders were all delightful and capable people. Like you, I felt I couldn't protect them and keep my mental health intact at the same time.
- strontian 4y ago
  You seem like a great manager/employee - sad that this is the situation you faced at this company

by adra 4y ago

317070 4y ago

What is "meteocracy"?

tannhaeuser 4y ago
Post-impact constitutional crisis
yeahbutiguess 4y ago
A misspelling of mediocrity, I'd assume?
adra 4y ago
Autocorrect gone wrong
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rsynnott 4y ago
Rule by weather forecasters.
- hardlianotion 4y ago
  By the weather gods themselves.
potatoinexhaust 4y ago
Result of a meteocre spellchecker

lucidguppy 4y ago

I wonder if XP helps through pair programming. Managers get to code and also get to mentor juniors at the same time.

zx8080 4y ago
Does this happen anywhere? I've never seen any manager personally mentoring juniors.
- justinclift 4y ago
  Not sure about managers, but (more) senior technical staff and team leaders are supposed to mentor the less experienced technical staff. Whether or not it happens seems to depend on the team. Personally, I like teaching people new stuff so it would often fall to me, on the teams I worked in. ;)
- johncalvinyoung 4y ago
  Definitely. I'm a team lead (duties: mix of team management, project management, and some IC development), and my mentor is on the management team, and I mentor a junior dev. One of my prior mentors (as a junior dev back then) was the company founder/CEO twenty-five years senior to me. Of course, that founder was one of the originators of XP practice, and ran our company on those principles--pairing, fast feedback loops, and mentorship for all (he's since handed over the company to his #2 who he mentored for a decade, and who is continuing those practices).
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Definitely. I’m an engineering manager (admittedly at a startup) and I pair program with my team all of the time.
jonfw 4y ago
Mentorship down the chain of command sounds nice, but for most juniors that's just going to cause anxiety. The most impactful mentors I've had personally were senior developer / tech lead types. My managers were great, but it's just easier to have the "is this a stupid idea" conversation with somebody who doesn't sign your paycheck

kradroy 4y ago

This was my experience at my last company, except compressed into 1 year. Once I joined I learned that 30% of my time would be dedicated to hiring. The company had a pooled hiring process, and I came to hate it. I spent several hours a week reading resumes, interviewing, reading interviewers' feedback, sitting in roundtables, strategizing with recruiters, and if all that went well, pitching candidates to the hiring committee. Then I would sit back, with no control over the comp, and watch the candidate choose another team, largely because my team wasn't a "sexy" team; very critical to business, but not sexy. In the handful of cases where my team was the only option, the candidates would turn down the offer due to "insufficient compensation". The company had a "no negotiation" stance on offers. So once the offer went out, that was that. In my first performance review my manager put "hiring" as an area of improvement. I felt this was a trap and would be used to let me go eventually, in spite of the fact my team grew from 3 to 10 engineers from internal transfers and we were hitting all our deliverables. Between hiring and navigating the terribly siloed corporate structure to build cross-functional teams I had almost no time outside of 1:1s to spend with my own team. It was a really disappointing experience and I felt really bad when I left, because my team and stakeholders were all delightful and capable people. Like you, I felt I couldn't protect them and keep my mental health intact at the same time.

strontian 4y ago
You seem like a great manager/employee - sad that this is the situation you faced at this company