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Something to note is that there are two important variables in the second story. The first, as you say, is that you had a different manager. The second is that

Something to note is that there are two important variables in the second story. The first, as you say, is that you had a different manager. The second is that you had more experience. In every situation a manager is only ever as effective as the information they have, and that comes from how good their team is at communicating with them. I'd hazard a guess that you were better at telling your manager what they needed by the time the second event happened. If the team has good comms, and experience of both working and communicating updates to their manager regularly, and the skills to explain things in ways people understand, generally speaking you find the manager needs to check in less often. They can trust you to raise things promptly, to ask for them to do things for you, and that when you're quiet it's because you're busy rather than stuck. I find that teams who complain about their manager very often don't trust their manager and vice versa. Building up that trust by getting both sides to work on improving comms fixes a ton of problems.

rhommel 4y ago
> In every situation a manager is only ever as effective as the information they have, and that comes from how good their team is at communicating with them. So much true in these words
serial_dev 4y ago
> > Every 40-60 mins wanting to check with the ~3 engineers working on the issue for an update > I find that teams who complain about their manager very often don't trust their manager and vice versa. I get that sometimes it's not (only) the manager's fault if there is no trust, but if as a manager you need a status update every 40 minutes while the people are fire fighting and working on an incident, I feel like you failed as a manager.
- viraptor 4y ago
  I feel like there's a good and bad way to do this at the same interval. Of course it depends on the situation as well and what you say, but when I'm dealing with an actual emergency, I can't imagine not posting an update every hour or so. Usually much more as a way of documenting what's happening for a later PIR. If a manager doesn't get the required details to know what's happening (I'm situations where they do and still ignore it), then the whole process could use an improvement. From my SRE perspective, if an incident takes longer than 30min, I want my manager/coordinator to be constantly updated and handle communication with the rest of the company/customers.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    I’ve been that SRE senior manager in some longer-than-ideal outages. One of my biggest roles was chasing off the lookie-loos and fending off the VPs and CIO (usually by telling them to GTFO of the war room but then going to give them an update away from the team with what we knew and what I thought).
  - 8ytecoder 4y ago
    Usually there’s a primary and a secondary. One person handles the actual debugging and the other handles the communication and coordinating. While I agree it’s poor management to ask for an update every few minutes, it’s not because asking for an update is bad, rather because they themselves failed to communicate and train their employees to properly handle communication. Looking back, this was something we did in our team when I was just <2 years out of college. I was the secondary and posted updated to the tickets and emailed the team every 30 minutes. I was also the one calling in people to help when primary needed help. My manager didn’t bother us because he had already clearly laid out how we handle issues of each severity and who does what. It was also clear what the chain of escalation was and who and how to reach out. Incidentally, it was also my job to close the issue by identifying the cause and fixing the issue from recurring - because the secondary was only observing and communicating they get to see the bigger picture and also a welcome break for the person working hard to fix the issue. Learnt a lot by working with a team that knew how to handle themselves. And we weren’t SRE - just regular devs. This manager - my very first one - has also been the best one I’ve ever had. I wasn’t surprised at all when he quickly scaled the ladder and is doing really well for himself now.
idopmstuff 4y ago
While I do think the manager bears the vast majority of the responsibility in situations like these, the reality is that you're right, and oftentimes managers do a bad job because they're getting pressured from above to communicate and don't know what to do. You can often get them on your side by giving them a plan that makes them feel like they're in control (again, totally not your responsibility! But better than dealing with them being obnoxious constantly). If they ask for an update and you say, "I don't know what's wrong, but we're looking into it" then they don't know what to do. If you tell them "I don't know what's wrong, but right now we're investigating x because we suspect that's the source of the issue. I'm checking the logs and other engineer is trying to recreate the issue in a clean environment. Unfortunately I don't have a good answer as to how long it'll take, but we'll update you either when we've learned something useful or in two hours, whichever is sooner," then they have something to say to the people above them and they understand when they'll get an update, so they don't need to bother you. A helpless manager is like a child - if left alone, they'll just shout and cause problems. What they really need is direction and structure.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  > A helpless manager is like a child - if left alone, they'll just shout and cause problems. What they really need is direction and structure. What they really need is to find a different job. Needing to "manage up" is the ultimate waste of resources IMO and puts a lot of stress on the employees, why even have a manager at that point.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
    While I tend to agree with you, this doesn't look like anything actionable. I've even tried it by saying something like: "I get the impression you don't really enjoy your job" and getting a response something like "no, I hate it, I hate trying to manage people", and then suggesting the look at job ads. Nothing has changed since.
    - candiddevmike 4y ago
      I agree, and to make matters worse, IME managers of managers tend to be very apathetic of their reports and don't have the same kind of scrutiny of the folks under them that they expect those same people to have of their reports. So the people that shouldn't be managing others don't really have a "check" above them to confirm it, especially if they're good at deflecting blame/sacrificing their reports. I'm a big advocate for no confidence votes from reports to signal to someone that this person needs to go.
tremon 4y ago
that comes from how good their team is at communicating with them Communication is a two-way street. Proactively calling a meeting with all those involved to understand the situation and then letting the team get on with their work is 100% a managerial skill, not a function of the seniority of the engineers.
Waterluvian 4y ago
My knee-jerk reaction is to offer a riposte of additional data demonstrating it really was about the managers. But I think you've got a valuable and generalizable point here. I'm going to reflect a bit on that. You know what's difficult? Looking back at a younger self and being truly critical. Gosh, it's so easy to just say, "yeah well his employment future at that company proves my point." But then I learn nothing else that I can grow from.
- KyeRussell 4y ago
  Having that knee-jerk reaction in the first place is something you want to lose ASAP.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
re-thc 4y ago
> I find that teams who complain about their manager very often don't trust their manager and vice versa. Building up that trust by getting both sides to work on improving comms fixes a ton of problems. Sometimes it's beyond that. The problem can be layers up where neither the manager nor the rest of the team can solve. The team wants changes / improvements but the manager is powerless or forced to act in a certain way.

rhommel 4y ago

> In every situation a manager is only ever as effective as the information they have, and that comes from how good their team is at communicating with them. So much true in these words

serial_dev 4y ago

> > Every 40-60 mins wanting to check with the ~3 engineers working on the issue for an update > I find that teams who complain about their manager very often don't trust their manager and vice versa. I get that sometimes it's not (only) the manager's fault if there is no trust, but if as a manager you need a status update every 40 minutes while the people are fire fighting and working on an incident, I feel like you failed as a manager.

viraptor 4y ago
I feel like there's a good and bad way to do this at the same interval. Of course it depends on the situation as well and what you say, but when I'm dealing with an actual emergency, I can't imagine not posting an update every hour or so. Usually much more as a way of documenting what's happening for a later PIR. If a manager doesn't get the required details to know what's happening (I'm situations where they do and still ignore it), then the whole process could use an improvement. From my SRE perspective, if an incident takes longer than 30min, I want my manager/coordinator to be constantly updated and handle communication with the rest of the company/customers.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I’ve been that SRE senior manager in some longer-than-ideal outages. One of my biggest roles was chasing off the lookie-loos and fending off the VPs and CIO (usually by telling them to GTFO of the war room but then going to give them an update away from the team with what we knew and what I thought).
- 8ytecoder 4y ago
  Usually there’s a primary and a secondary. One person handles the actual debugging and the other handles the communication and coordinating. While I agree it’s poor management to ask for an update every few minutes, it’s not because asking for an update is bad, rather because they themselves failed to communicate and train their employees to properly handle communication. Looking back, this was something we did in our team when I was just <2 years out of college. I was the secondary and posted updated to the tickets and emailed the team every 30 minutes. I was also the one calling in people to help when primary needed help. My manager didn’t bother us because he had already clearly laid out how we handle issues of each severity and who does what. It was also clear what the chain of escalation was and who and how to reach out. Incidentally, it was also my job to close the issue by identifying the cause and fixing the issue from recurring - because the secondary was only observing and communicating they get to see the bigger picture and also a welcome break for the person working hard to fix the issue. Learnt a lot by working with a team that knew how to handle themselves. And we weren’t SRE - just regular devs. This manager - my very first one - has also been the best one I’ve ever had. I wasn’t surprised at all when he quickly scaled the ladder and is doing really well for himself now.

idopmstuff 4y ago

While I do think the manager bears the vast majority of the responsibility in situations like these, the reality is that you're right, and oftentimes managers do a bad job because they're getting pressured from above to communicate and don't know what to do. You can often get them on your side by giving them a plan that makes them feel like they're in control (again, totally not your responsibility! But better than dealing with them being obnoxious constantly). If they ask for an update and you say, "I don't know what's wrong, but we're looking into it" then they don't know what to do. If you tell them "I don't know what's wrong, but right now we're investigating x because we suspect that's the source of the issue. I'm checking the logs and other engineer is trying to recreate the issue in a clean environment. Unfortunately I don't have a good answer as to how long it'll take, but we'll update you either when we've learned something useful or in two hours, whichever is sooner," then they have something to say to the people above them and they understand when they'll get an update, so they don't need to bother you. A helpless manager is like a child - if left alone, they'll just shout and cause problems. What they really need is direction and structure.

candiddevmike 4y ago
> A helpless manager is like a child - if left alone, they'll just shout and cause problems. What they really need is direction and structure. What they really need is to find a different job. Needing to "manage up" is the ultimate waste of resources IMO and puts a lot of stress on the employees, why even have a manager at that point.
- TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
  While I tend to agree with you, this doesn't look like anything actionable. I've even tried it by saying something like: "I get the impression you don't really enjoy your job" and getting a response something like "no, I hate it, I hate trying to manage people", and then suggesting the look at job ads. Nothing has changed since.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    I agree, and to make matters worse, IME managers of managers tend to be very apathetic of their reports and don't have the same kind of scrutiny of the folks under them that they expect those same people to have of their reports. So the people that shouldn't be managing others don't really have a "check" above them to confirm it, especially if they're good at deflecting blame/sacrificing their reports. I'm a big advocate for no confidence votes from reports to signal to someone that this person needs to go.

tremon 4y ago

that comes from how good their team is at communicating with them Communication is a two-way street. Proactively calling a meeting with all those involved to understand the situation and then letting the team get on with their work is 100% a managerial skill, not a function of the seniority of the engineers.

Waterluvian 4y ago

My knee-jerk reaction is to offer a riposte of additional data demonstrating it really was about the managers. But I think you've got a valuable and generalizable point here. I'm going to reflect a bit on that. You know what's difficult? Looking back at a younger self and being truly critical. Gosh, it's so easy to just say, "yeah well his employment future at that company proves my point." But then I learn nothing else that I can grow from.

KyeRussell 4y ago
Having that knee-jerk reaction in the first place is something you want to lose ASAP.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

re-thc 4y ago

> I find that teams who complain about their manager very often don't trust their manager and vice versa. Building up that trust by getting both sides to work on improving comms fixes a ton of problems. Sometimes it's beyond that. The problem can be layers up where neither the manager nor the rest of the team can solve. The team wants changes / improvements but the manager is powerless or forced to act in a certain way.