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Pretty much each piece of advice here can easily be replaced with software. I think "manager as supervisor" is frankly dead. It just hasnt stopped moving yet.

Pretty much each piece of advice here can easily be replaced with software. I think "manager as supervisor" is frankly dead. It just hasnt stopped moving yet. For me a great thing to learn from software development is daily integration builds - whatever work is being done, build it as the complete sellable product every day. This way you will get good at making the saleable product

nine_zeros 4y ago
Supervisory management actively impedes work. Managers should be planners, resource allocators and stakeholder communicators. They should work to bring their team into alignment with their org's goals and their company's goals. By attempting to be a supervisor, it sets the wrong incentives within the team. This is also the reason why penalizing performance reviews don't work. It causes lower morale within the time and nobody really feels aligned with the company. Everyone is out there looking out for themselves.
- lifeisstillgood 4y ago
  >>> Managers should be planners, resource allocators and stakeholder communicators. They should work to bring their team into alignment with their org's goals and their company's goals. But there are either better ways to do these things, or they still require coercive (supervisory) activity. So planning. yeah it's important. Have a clear goal and work out what you need to achieve it. Frankly the new intern can achieve most of that in one day, and all the senior team can easily do it. And prioritise it. The hard part is where you have multiple parts in parallel. Sometimes people think they are some Moriarty style genius who can direct each part to develop and land with precision six months in the future. Total bill ox. If you aren't doing daily integrations you aren't co-ordinating and so you aren't "planning". Yeah there is a function of logistics - but that's spreadsheets and gaming out scenarios - not a "management task" but certainly a "management input" - and if instead of giving it solely to managers you just published it to the whole org such logistics would be available to increase discussion and awareness (ie the workers would understand the plan better and not need managers) Resource allocators - pretty much as above - plans, resource budget all different sides of same coin. Aligning goals ... that's incentives. That's easy - pay me. Otherwise ... looks a lot like coercion.
  - mhss 4y ago
    > But there are either better ways to do these things, or they still require coercive (supervisory) activity. I wish there were a consistent answer to this, but part of the reason management is hard (and I won't deny there's plenty of useless managers) is that people is very variable and you need to adjust your approach depending on the organization composition. > So planning. yeah it's important. Have a clear goal and work out what you need to achieve it. Frankly the new intern can achieve most of that in one day, and all the senior team can easily do it. And prioritise it. There are plenty of teams and situation where this is hardly "easy", particularly at very large companies. Relative priorities are not always clear, many teams demanding your team's attention and understanding what is "best" for the company and company goals, the team and individuals is non-trivial. You need to align all of those. It requires constant communication (hence why managers spend time on meetings, reading presentations, reading roadmaps from other teams, 1:1s with their team to understand their personal goals, etc); > and if instead of giving it solely to managers you just published it to the whole org such logistics would be available to increase discussion and awareness (ie the workers would understand the plan better and not need managers) Even in organizations where the information is open and all documentation, meeting notes, spreadsheets, etc; are open people struggle to understand and some just want the summary (I'd say most); they don't want to know how the sausage is made outside maybe have an understanding of the process (and some not even that). > Aligning goals ... that's incentives. That's easy - pay me. Otherwise ... looks a lot like coercion. Maybe is that easy for you. A lot of people want something else from their careers and as a manager you have to align what the organization wants with what the individual(s) and teams want as much as is reasonable to maximize their satisfaction (retention, performance, etc; is better if you achieve this).
    - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
      I am maybe being overly cynical but I do not get the distinctions you are making. We are talking about software, and software is eating the world - but the great thing about software is that you can deploy it in different environments and monitor the results. Now of course "prod is different" but, the "difficult" bits you are talking about are all "how can we alignnincentices so that the ten big projects all land successfully and deliver in two years". You cannot. No matter how big brained you are no matter how many meetings. It's impossible. So just integrate the whole fucking lot early, run a series of prod like data through it, build a couple of teams that run this integrations and they tell everyone the current state of the ten big projects. Everyone will align around those test rigs pretty damn quickly, and the ceo only needs to beast one team regularly to make sure they are not favouring anyone too much. Or even better run two test rigs or theee and triangulate the results. Expensive yes but damn it will get results. And it removes a huge layer of "management status reports". What is the status of the ten projects? go look at each test rig. As for "people don't want to read the open docs" - that's not what Inmean. people don't want to read the minutes of the board meeting because the decision has already been taken and their views don't matter. Democracy works differently - people will take an interest when their votes directly influence which stupid project gets ten million this year. And importantly politicians will arise internally - who will explain and advocate for certain projects amoung the voting base - they will be like FDR and gain power and be called traitors to their class. And finally - no. aligning incentives is easy. Pay me.
volkk 4y ago
> I think "manager as supervisor" is frankly dead. sorta. as someone who is an EM, so i guess take the bias with a grain of salt, the difference between a really good EM, and someone who warms a seat is astounding. the really good ones have strong opinions, can coach well on a variety of topics (e.g effective communication, organizational thinking), and understand the technicals at least from a level of where you can see how your direct reports are doing. they also understand the economics/business of a company and can foresee which teams are dead-ends so they can offer good advice to direct reports to grow careers. the ones who warm seats are glorified project managers. no real advice beyond "should we do standups, when are retros" and basics like running a board, or taking notes during meetings. usually pretty disconnected from the day to day, no strong opinions on the actual hard stuff, just topical high level advice. plenty of those in the field, and its unfortunate because its not a hard science, so they tend to BS their ways into these positions and make a lot of money. either way, managers aren't going anywhere and no amount of code will automate them away.
- dalyons 4y ago
  I agree and further - After ~20 or so years in tech (including being a manger myself for awhile) I would guess about 70% of EMs industry wide are your “seat warmers”. They’re not necessarily harmful or bad people, just kind of useless. These days I have learned to pretty much ignore what they say and chart my own path to making things happen.
  - SamuelAdams 4y ago
    Unfortunately in corporate America there are many people who are simply coasting towards retirement. It’s quite difficult to motivate someone when they only have three years left.
    - dalyons 4y ago
      im not sure if its that in tech - mostly people are pretty motivated. I think there's just more need for manager roles (HR stuff, 1/1s, communication, coordination, etc) than there exists willing talented candidates. So the bar gets naturally lowered and we end up with a lot of mediocre seat warmers.

nine_zeros 4y ago

Supervisory management actively impedes work. Managers should be planners, resource allocators and stakeholder communicators. They should work to bring their team into alignment with their org's goals and their company's goals. By attempting to be a supervisor, it sets the wrong incentives within the team. This is also the reason why penalizing performance reviews don't work. It causes lower morale within the time and nobody really feels aligned with the company. Everyone is out there looking out for themselves.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago
>>> Managers should be planners, resource allocators and stakeholder communicators. They should work to bring their team into alignment with their org's goals and their company's goals. But there are either better ways to do these things, or they still require coercive (supervisory) activity. So planning. yeah it's important. Have a clear goal and work out what you need to achieve it. Frankly the new intern can achieve most of that in one day, and all the senior team can easily do it. And prioritise it. The hard part is where you have multiple parts in parallel. Sometimes people think they are some Moriarty style genius who can direct each part to develop and land with precision six months in the future. Total bill ox. If you aren't doing daily integrations you aren't co-ordinating and so you aren't "planning". Yeah there is a function of logistics - but that's spreadsheets and gaming out scenarios - not a "management task" but certainly a "management input" - and if instead of giving it solely to managers you just published it to the whole org such logistics would be available to increase discussion and awareness (ie the workers would understand the plan better and not need managers) Resource allocators - pretty much as above - plans, resource budget all different sides of same coin. Aligning goals ... that's incentives. That's easy - pay me. Otherwise ... looks a lot like coercion.
- mhss 4y ago
  > But there are either better ways to do these things, or they still require coercive (supervisory) activity. I wish there were a consistent answer to this, but part of the reason management is hard (and I won't deny there's plenty of useless managers) is that people is very variable and you need to adjust your approach depending on the organization composition. > So planning. yeah it's important. Have a clear goal and work out what you need to achieve it. Frankly the new intern can achieve most of that in one day, and all the senior team can easily do it. And prioritise it. There are plenty of teams and situation where this is hardly "easy", particularly at very large companies. Relative priorities are not always clear, many teams demanding your team's attention and understanding what is "best" for the company and company goals, the team and individuals is non-trivial. You need to align all of those. It requires constant communication (hence why managers spend time on meetings, reading presentations, reading roadmaps from other teams, 1:1s with their team to understand their personal goals, etc); > and if instead of giving it solely to managers you just published it to the whole org such logistics would be available to increase discussion and awareness (ie the workers would understand the plan better and not need managers) Even in organizations where the information is open and all documentation, meeting notes, spreadsheets, etc; are open people struggle to understand and some just want the summary (I'd say most); they don't want to know how the sausage is made outside maybe have an understanding of the process (and some not even that). > Aligning goals ... that's incentives. That's easy - pay me. Otherwise ... looks a lot like coercion. Maybe is that easy for you. A lot of people want something else from their careers and as a manager you have to align what the organization wants with what the individual(s) and teams want as much as is reasonable to maximize their satisfaction (retention, performance, etc; is better if you achieve this).
  - lifeisstillgood 4y ago
    I am maybe being overly cynical but I do not get the distinctions you are making. We are talking about software, and software is eating the world - but the great thing about software is that you can deploy it in different environments and monitor the results. Now of course "prod is different" but, the "difficult" bits you are talking about are all "how can we alignnincentices so that the ten big projects all land successfully and deliver in two years". You cannot. No matter how big brained you are no matter how many meetings. It's impossible. So just integrate the whole fucking lot early, run a series of prod like data through it, build a couple of teams that run this integrations and they tell everyone the current state of the ten big projects. Everyone will align around those test rigs pretty damn quickly, and the ceo only needs to beast one team regularly to make sure they are not favouring anyone too much. Or even better run two test rigs or theee and triangulate the results. Expensive yes but damn it will get results. And it removes a huge layer of "management status reports". What is the status of the ten projects? go look at each test rig. As for "people don't want to read the open docs" - that's not what Inmean. people don't want to read the minutes of the board meeting because the decision has already been taken and their views don't matter. Democracy works differently - people will take an interest when their votes directly influence which stupid project gets ten million this year. And importantly politicians will arise internally - who will explain and advocate for certain projects amoung the voting base - they will be like FDR and gain power and be called traitors to their class. And finally - no. aligning incentives is easy. Pay me.

volkk 4y ago

> I think "manager as supervisor" is frankly dead. sorta. as someone who is an EM, so i guess take the bias with a grain of salt, the difference between a really good EM, and someone who warms a seat is astounding. the really good ones have strong opinions, can coach well on a variety of topics (e.g effective communication, organizational thinking), and understand the technicals at least from a level of where you can see how your direct reports are doing. they also understand the economics/business of a company and can foresee which teams are dead-ends so they can offer good advice to direct reports to grow careers. the ones who warm seats are glorified project managers. no real advice beyond "should we do standups, when are retros" and basics like running a board, or taking notes during meetings. usually pretty disconnected from the day to day, no strong opinions on the actual hard stuff, just topical high level advice. plenty of those in the field, and its unfortunate because its not a hard science, so they tend to BS their ways into these positions and make a lot of money. either way, managers aren't going anywhere and no amount of code will automate them away.

dalyons 4y ago
I agree and further - After ~20 or so years in tech (including being a manger myself for awhile) I would guess about 70% of EMs industry wide are your “seat warmers”. They’re not necessarily harmful or bad people, just kind of useless. These days I have learned to pretty much ignore what they say and chart my own path to making things happen.
- SamuelAdams 4y ago
  Unfortunately in corporate America there are many people who are simply coasting towards retirement. It’s quite difficult to motivate someone when they only have three years left.
  - dalyons 4y ago
    im not sure if its that in tech - mostly people are pretty motivated. I think there's just more need for manager roles (HR stuff, 1/1s, communication, coordination, etc) than there exists willing talented candidates. So the bar gets naturally lowered and we end up with a lot of mediocre seat warmers.