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While this sounds legit in isolation, it's worth noting that it's not always managers who put pressure, but rather the circumstances. We live in a competitive w

While this sounds legit in isolation, it's worth noting that it's not always managers who put pressure, but rather the circumstances. We live in a competitive world, and success depends on how fast we can deliver a product to the market. It's easy to put all the responsibility on managers, but this is only part of the picture. I mean, you can create a better product by taking more time, and the whole company still dies because you're too late. This is where the stress comes from; managers only translate it.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago
That's a manager talking. The company dies anyway, so that argument is moot. The solution lies somewhere else. For instance, actually taking the pressure off with resources - e.g. the manager can get their status reports by actually understanding the project by short one-on-one interviews and attending design meetings. Instead of asking everyone to come to a staff meeting, or send their status reports and jamming them into one aggregated email and forwarding that as their own work and pretending they did something.
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  Agreed. One powerful idea for software development is "integration and promotion" - integrating code from different commits / workers and putting them into one package and testing it and only then moving it forward. you can take this principle into everything - got a marketing launch? Set up in the room downstairs and run your timings, Basically "plans" that do not involve early surfacing and use of the product (and just hoping you are a good enough manager to tell everyone what to do) is doomed. we only do well things we do often
actionfromafar 4y ago
Not only, but yes. The skill is to know when to take your time and when not to.
monkeydust 4y ago
100%. People forget managers are humans too. They were likely an IC at some point and now have to answer to higher up power who are under more acute PnL stress hence the pressure flows down to them. The trick with manager is to release some of that pressure as it goes down to their directs, this might mean taking it head on directly and shielding directs from it or just re-directing it back up the chain.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ramblerman 4y ago
Creating artificial pressure due to some broad and unfounded fear like “we live in a competitive world” is the tell tale sign of a weak manager. Right up there with the fake pressure to add a sense of importance.
karmakaze 4y ago
A good manager is among other things a "shit umbrella". If a manager thinks they're doing a good job by 'translating' external factors into pressuring the team to work harder, faster, they're not.
atoav 4y ago
Management as I see it has to do with managing the resources of a company just in the right way. That means there are many wrong ways and few right ways. So instead of providing to few resources for a task you could of course also mismanage into the other direction and have a ton of people doing nothing. That is not the point. Typical organizations very often have both at the same time, but in different places. (Bad) managment sometimes has a hard time telling the two apart, but in my experience they are more afraid of allocating too many resources ("wasting resources") than of allocating too little, because the cost of allocating too much is obvious to their superiors, while the costs of allocating too little is much more hidden, delayed and harder to correlate. If that really good employee quits after three years of resource-starvation, the causal connection to mismanagment might not be drawn, the manager might even be applauded how well they managed the resources. The friction that comes with replacing that person, however, is real. There are organizations that burn through employees like it is nothing, and they think that amount of turnover and the waste of resources and time that it brings is normal. I argued against that.

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

That's a manager talking. The company dies anyway, so that argument is moot. The solution lies somewhere else. For instance, actually taking the pressure off with resources - e.g. the manager can get their status reports by actually understanding the project by short one-on-one interviews and attending design meetings. Instead of asking everyone to come to a staff meeting, or send their status reports and jamming them into one aggregated email and forwarding that as their own work and pretending they did something.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago
Agreed. One powerful idea for software development is "integration and promotion" - integrating code from different commits / workers and putting them into one package and testing it and only then moving it forward. you can take this principle into everything - got a marketing launch? Set up in the room downstairs and run your timings, Basically "plans" that do not involve early surfacing and use of the product (and just hoping you are a good enough manager to tell everyone what to do) is doomed. we only do well things we do often

actionfromafar 4y ago

Not only, but yes. The skill is to know when to take your time and when not to.

monkeydust 4y ago

100%. People forget managers are humans too. They were likely an IC at some point and now have to answer to higher up power who are under more acute PnL stress hence the pressure flows down to them. The trick with manager is to release some of that pressure as it goes down to their directs, this might mean taking it head on directly and shielding directs from it or just re-directing it back up the chain.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ramblerman 4y ago

Creating artificial pressure due to some broad and unfounded fear like “we live in a competitive world” is the tell tale sign of a weak manager. Right up there with the fake pressure to add a sense of importance.

karmakaze 4y ago

A good manager is among other things a "shit umbrella". If a manager thinks they're doing a good job by 'translating' external factors into pressuring the team to work harder, faster, they're not.

atoav 4y ago

Management as I see it has to do with managing the resources of a company just in the right way. That means there are many wrong ways and few right ways. So instead of providing to few resources for a task you could of course also mismanage into the other direction and have a ton of people doing nothing. That is not the point. Typical organizations very often have both at the same time, but in different places. (Bad) managment sometimes has a hard time telling the two apart, but in my experience they are more afraid of allocating too many resources ("wasting resources") than of allocating too little, because the cost of allocating too much is obvious to their superiors, while the costs of allocating too little is much more hidden, delayed and harder to correlate. If that really good employee quits after three years of resource-starvation, the causal connection to mismanagment might not be drawn, the manager might even be applauded how well they managed the resources. The friction that comes with replacing that person, however, is real. There are organizations that burn through employees like it is nothing, and they think that amount of turnover and the waste of resources and time that it brings is normal. I argued against that.